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new bike. i’ve been slowly working up to riding regularly. last week i went on a couple short rides. this week, another more strenuous ride. today i biked up the pennsylvania ave hill, zig-zag down to 17th over to the UPS building (where they were cooking dinner on a large BBQ outside their warehouse), back down 16th to 3rd street then home.
i ended up finding an bianchi eros at a discount, since it was an ‘05 model, from the good folks at pacific bicycle.
i think i’ve found something more creepy than finding obscure references to yourself on the web. automatically generated meta-pages about you. these are websites i’ve never seen before but are generating syndicated information i write and associate with into summary pages.
every time i listen to joni mitchell, i want to leave what i’m doing and go sit in a coffee shop all day with my laptop and ipod. melancholy..
telephone, even the sound of your voice is still new
all alone in california and talking to you
and feeling too foolish and strange to say the words that i had planned
i guess its too early, cause i dont know where i stand..
tonight we cooked greek. fresh baked pita break, a greek salad, home made tzaziki, and souvlaki. this was a great dinner for a monday night, since most of the preparation was done the night before. everything came out amazing.
we used recipes from the food network website since they were relatively simple compared to others we found — salad, souvlaki, tzaziki, pita.
another item from the surplus sale. it was very clean, despite having a stamp stating 1956 on it. i took the face plate off to dust the inside off. there was a big piece of lint on the inside.
i took shot this photo with my carl-meyer 12″ lens on my 8×10 camera. 1/100 at f/32. i shot the same image onto hp5+ at f/64. used both my speedotron and novatron sets. i’m finding it convenient to have two separately controlled lights synched together.
i have another tube and a mercury switch i want to photograph still. i’m getting low on polaroid film. also need to catch up on film development and printing.. been too busy lately.
this is the back of a wire-wrap board i picked up at a surplus sale. it’s got a hand-written label that reads, “tactical control and status”. i thought it would be an interesting object to photograph. it turns out it is more difficult than i thought.
what do you focus on when you want nothing really in focus?
i shot a couple polaroids. one using selective focus. another was head on with with the board-level parts in focus. the third, you see above - the lens is wide open and focused on the wires that are furthest from the board. i chose the 4.5/210 heliar i have for its bokeh.
i’m still not sure how exactly i want to shoot this on film. i will try one more combination, a well lit board with long depth of field. it should look completely different than this.
i’ve already got a small backlog of film to develop and prints to make in this series. but so far it is really fun.
so i have this credit card.. the APR is stuck at an insane percentage but their website is decent and the limit is high. i’ve used it for large purchases i pay off quickly and keep the card around for emergencies. though now i’m wanting to change it out for something slightly less insane.
i made one recent purchase on the card for $1136.11. i called yesterday to see if they could lower the APR but was told they “proactively” monitor accounts for offers and changes and couldn’t do anything for me over the phone. i was surprised, since my credit is at its highest score ever (according to their own website) and i’ve paid the card off in full for quite a while now. fine, i wanted to cancel my account. only my last transaction hadn’t posted yet…..
today it’s posted, so i called back. i was told there would be an “estimated close out” of $1170 and that paying the balance over the phone would cost $14.95. what?! first, it’s great to not even ask why i’m closing the account. second, not being able to realize my current balance is silly. and trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of me.. nasty. what a great way to say, “well screw you for leaving us!”
so i’m paying this card off in full right now online and will have to wait for that to clear. then i can call them a third time to close the account. i am really looking forward to it.
this weekend was very active.
we went bike shopping with john. ryan and i may buy bikes soon. looks like we’re both eyeing steel-frame road bikes. ryan’s eyes are on a surly. me? probably a bianchi.
at the suggestion of my coworker chris, i went down to santa clara early on sunday to check out an electronics surplus sale. i picked up a bunch of goodies, including a wire-wrap board labeled “tactical control and status”. i found some new items that would go well with this vintage-electronic series i’ve got going.
also managed to make a few open-houses, to re-wet our feet. one place we saw, the entryway reaked of urine and the place was not that great. on our way out, a car was coming down the alleyway but had to stop because there was a guy laying down on the street. and once we were on our way out of the alley? we noticed this place was just around the corner from 1015 folsom. ya, no on all accounts. no wonder it was listed cheaply. i dont think i’d even rent it.
sunday we returned to bike shops to mull things over, test ride some bianchi bikes, and discuss our thoughts. on the way home (wayyyy out of the way) we stopped by irving to shop for monday dinner. cooking indonesian again, new dishes (straits-inspired) this time.
this short amendment is such a pain in the ass.
this is a westinghouse 6bd4a tube, a high-voltage, low current regulator. probably for a television power supply.. i love its simplicity, two elements that do not touch. it reminds you that electrons can travel without an tangible conductor.
from the sylvania spec sheet from their 6bd4a - “Operation of the 6BD4 at plate voltages above 16,000 volts (absolute value) results in the production of X-rays which can constitute a health hazard unless adequately shielded.” — yikes!
i debated the placement of this one. there’s an octagon-shaped logo silk-screened onto the front of the tube. i debated rotating the tube around so the logo was off to the side in the rear. that, or scraping it off completely.
front light - novatron, about 30 w-s. back light - speedotron 202vf, dialed all the way down to about 70 w-s. the usual paper-and-glass treatment, though this time the glass is elevated off the table a few inches to hopefully make the edge of the glass disappear.
i meant to take time in photographing the bottles from last night, but it was so late when i did it. this looks really washed out on my monitor at work.. anyways..
last night we had some friends over for a hot pot dinner. it’s awesome to have good friends over, consume lots of tasty beverages, and enjoy a dinner you cook together (which spans so much time you take an intermission between courses!).
after some divide-and-conquer to restore our place to a reasonable state (hotpot generates a good amount of garbage and a ton of dishes), it was nice to sit down and relax. thanks for the oranges, patrick!
to our credit, the largest bottle in the top picture was not full when we started - it had only a small amount of sake in it which was used for the broth. the rest, however, was consumed by seven of us. good times.
here’s the recipe for the spicy sesame sauce i made for the dinner –
1/2 cup sesame paste
1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup sugar
1-1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespool chili oil
1 teaspoon ground chili flakes
put all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until creamy and smooth (it will take a long while for the sesame paste to loosen up).
i live in an old house. there’s a small gate at the sidewalk that leads you down a few steps to a walkway into the downstairs where i live. next to the house is a large live/work loft building with vines growing up the face. there are a lot of dog owners in the neighborhood, particularly in the loft building. and.. there’s something about the vines that the dogs love (convenient location?) and they all pee on it. on the curb at the street. and, for some reason, right in the middle of the sidewalk just outside my gate. for a while, there was a hand-written sign placed behind the vines asking people to not let their dog pee on the plants (i noticed that sign is gone now).
anyways, last night i was driving home from dinner when i saw a car parked at a weird angle in front of my gate. the driver’s side door was open and there was someone standing there facing the car. i could see in plain sight the entirety of this person’s ass. their boxers and jeans were pulled way down. was something lewd happening right in front of my home? was there some sort of sex act going on, or were they sick? needless to say, i decided to park a few cars further down the hill.
by the time i walked up the car was on its way. i looked at the street where the car was. there was a puddle with a stream going down the hill. did guy just take a long piss on the street in front?
it’s bad enough that all the dogs do it, and perpetuate a urine smell in the area. but a person?
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