my life, as far as i know.

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Originally uploaded by Jason Schlachet

on this long weekend the lot of us went to spices ii in the richmond. even after choosing less-spicy fare, this restaurant’s spices plagued me for a good twenty-four hours. i think i’ll pass on the next opportunity. i still find it amusing that popular chinese restaurants have such bad service. for example, as we sat down a waitress poured tea in front of me but a lot of it spilled onto the table and i jumped back. she looked at me, laid dropped a napkin down onto the mess, and walked off. she never poured tea for anybody else and never attended to the spilled tea. what is that?

on sunday, ryan and i decided on a late dinner at chez maman. we waited quite a while, but ended up talking with a couple outside the restaurant. they live down on indiana street, not far from us. they’re foodies too, with tastes similar to ours, so we had a good time trading tips.

monday was a bar-b-que at jonathan and adrian’s. the picture is our grillmaster for the day, galen. monday’s weather turned out to be glorious. we had yummy grilled greek fare and great company.

unfortunately for me, the day ended with me gouging a chunk of rubber off my front passenger-side tire. i misjudged the curb trying to park on folsom street. it’s hard to keep your cool when you do something stupid with a car full of friends. anyways, ya.. the brand new tire. it dampened my mood for the rest of the day, despite picking up a pair of new balance 992 shoes. those are comfy! i purchased new balance on the recommendation of the podiatrist i saw. got that task crossed off my list.

after such a social weekend, work feels like a different world again. i have lots of things to wortk on now: photo project, replace the tire (i’m afraid to drive on it), replace windshield (crack is growing again).. and with the new apple desktop coming, i’ll be upgrading the home networking to gigabit speeds.

on a day like today, it’s nice to have some home-made french onion soup. boman secured a whole box of sweet onions and cooked them all down. add some dried bread and cheese melted on top. mmmm.

while we were there, we visited with his chickens. they are five months old and just starting to lay eggs, the reason he’s keeping them. next weekend i’m helping build a hen house for them. boman is learning a lot about chickens, even meeting other people within the city that raise them. who knew?

today on my day off, i also got another significant task done. i went to a podiatrist.

i did a little research in finding on on san francisco. the financial district foot & ankle center came recommended. my experience there lived up to the reviews i saw. very strict scheduling (which i love), very friendly. they emailed me the new patient forms, which i brought with me 15 minutes before my scheduled appointment. the doctor was right on time and the session lasted just as long as they estimated.

doctor park made several observations about my feet, the way i walk, the way i put pressure on my feet, etc. she’s suggested two things for me. the first, is physical therapy to help correct my walking. the second is orthotics; they had enough time in the schedule to get the casting done today, so i will be able to pick them up in three weeks. the combination of the two should help me dramatically. she also suggested what kind of shoes i should be looking at for my particular feet. i’m very pleased overall with my appointment. i would definitely recommend their office.

i’m glad to get this rolling.. everybody’s been telling me i should get orthotics. literally, even my hair dresser has given me a hard time about it. at my next haircut i’ll tell bethany the good news :)

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this is my first wider post on my blog.

this is my dad in the petrified forest. scanned from a kodachrome slide, shot and processed in 1973. it looks like the auto-color matching of photoshop did pretty well. once i get around to scanning the other 500 slides it won’t take too much effort to do the post-process on the images i want to post.

had i been there in the park, i would have stolen a piece of the trees too. :)

i have such a love-hate relationship with computers. i love computers as tools. i love the unix command line for doing work. but i hate how computers are put together and how you buy them.

really, i just want a star trek or 2001: a space odyssey computer. i want it to have translucent crystals i just pop out and replace to upgrade. i want to lift it out a box with one hand, turn it on, and never do anything besides useful work with it from that point on.

at home i don’t have very demanding needs for a desktop. i want to browse the web, login to the servers i run, maybe do some programming. i listen to music all the time, sometimes i watch videos. every once in a while i’ll want to do some photo editing/scanning.

so i decided on a mac mini. as soon as i purchased it online, i had hesitations. is apple dropping this product? am i missing out on the better cpu’s performance in the imac? i just needed some validation that this wasn’t a silly decision. given apple’s shallow product line, this is probably the best choice for me, although but the highest performing.

the purchase experience has not been great. i tried buying one yesterday, actually. the store i was in had the parts (memory upgrade), the computer, and the staff to perform the upgrade.. just not the time. this morning i went to another store, which again had all the right parts, but the upgrade would take “24 to 48 hours”. keep in mind that, with the proper tools, this is a 10 minute job. it took 10 minutes for them to estimate the install time. this was after the store employee tried talking me out of purchasing a mini in favor of something more powerful. (i don’t like store employees asking me what i’ll be doing with this computer. don’t judge me!)

so after being disappointed twice during the past two days, i ended up just buying one online. i’m going to forget about it for now.. and when a package arrives for me at work next week i’ll have something to be happy about.

finished my new css layout. took some pictures last night to use up in the corner. this should work on wider screens.. no more fixed-width layout!

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Originally uploaded by Jason Schlachet.

this sunday i attended the make magazine annual maker faire in san mateo. it was truly cooler than i anticipated. i want to attend next year, and reserve more time for it.

we saw very briefly some battle bot competition, which was crazy. these are truly machines designed to kill. rotating steel weapons and fire! we saw parts literally flying in the cage, robots on fire, sparks, and of course the smell of burnt gear.

naturally, techshop had a large presence. some of the volunteers were demonstrating their shop’s machinery, such as CNC machines, laser etching, and metal lathes.

all in all, i wish i had saved more time to go around, maybe attend some of the demonstrations, and maybe buy an electronics kit for motivation. i came home feeling so lame.. i rarely do anything cool like make..

i really need a better blog layout/style/template. this one is too narrow.

in the past year ..

• i went hiking with my college friend jeff and his wife
• i had ranier up for several weekends, though not for a while.
• i evaded getting mugged.
• i fixed a stuck shutter by myself
• finally made it to burning man. i thought about you a lot. ryan and i baked 400 cookies to bring with is. it was crazy!
• i perfected my steak marinade.
• got fed up at affy and left. working at a better company closer to home now.
• took a week long solitary vacation to barstow. it was awesome. i want to go back.
• my friend emery’s mother passed away. i feel more grown up now.
• took a class on studio lighting, bought a grown-up set of gear. i still use that novatron set you and i bought for tom.
• been talking with other schlachets. remember eli down in san diego? one of his kids goes to berkeley now.
• got about half way through those slides. i’m still learning from you.
• started an actual photo project. shooting vacuum tubes. i love it. been going to flea markets hunting for them. reminds me of the old ham radio festivals.

anyways,

today is bike to work day and i drove in.

lorna’s moving this anniversary to december like it should be. but tonight is family night. picking up ryan and heading down the house after work today.

see you there.

ryan and i reorganized the wine. much easier to access now. there are several bottles that should be opened at the next chance. several that are probably at their prime now. and several i finally put into styrofoam containers for long term storage.

lots of cab and zin, plenty of port.

the amount of wine is still roughly what it was at last count: lots.

yesterday i got some printing done. this is the movie prop tube, printed on 11×14 glossy fiber paper. i’ve forgotten how tough it is to get these to dry flat. but properly mounted and framed they should be fine. i’m proud of how these came out. i think my goal is to get prints done of three images for an initial set in this series. this was a great first step towards actual results. who knows. another couple steps, and i’ll have an actual product i could sell.

i enjoy finding cool new places, especially for special occasions.

for ryan’s birthday, we went to the dining room at the ritz-carlton hotel. why not? it’s not every day you get to go to a nice restaurant in such a nice hotel.

we went on ryan’s birthday, a thursday. we were one of about five tables and easily the youngest patrons. one of the wait staff asked us how we found out about their restaurant and how we liked it. he noted that they were trying to get a younger more dynamic crowd in, especially on weekdays, and we should let our friends know.

first, this is a top notch hotel. the chef in this hotel’s restaurant was the first american to win the iron chef competition in japan. the service was amazing, easily in my top 5. and the main dish i ordered.. the roast duck, was probably the best duck i’ve ever had.

san francisco has so many great restaurants.. i feel pretty spoiled.