Archive for February 2008
I’m killing some time at the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave at 6:55, then they moved it to 7:30, not it says 8:44. All because ofa little drizzle. Sigh.
Well, I dug up this picture from my recent photo sprees, and I thought I’d share it with you.
My friends and family were all excited when I told them I would be traveling to San Francisco for Prosper Days. Well not really excited, but at least interested that I was going to travel in the newer Virgin America airline; also, they didn’t really care that I was going to Prosper Days. In anyway, I told them I would report back on how the flight went. If you ask me to be honest, I would tell you that the flight wasn’t anything special, nor was the airline.
Check out what happens when you leave Starbucks cream out for a weekend! You get Starbucks Cheese!
Well, besides the cheese I made by leaving the cream out for 3 or 4 days, I have a few things to complain about the big coffee guys. As you might know, I visit Starbucks quite frequently. I stop at whichever location is closest to me at the time when I leave a client’s site or when I want to get out of the house and get some work done.
Recently they closed down one of the shops I visit the most. The store was closed for approximately 14 days for renovation. About five days after they reopened, I went back to check it out. What a disappointment, they renovated the store alright; it looks nice, new, clean, brighter and more appealing. The problem is that they removed 20-30% of the area where you could sit down and enjoy your beverage! There used to be 6 round tables, and a handicapped table, with enough chairs for each table corresponding to its size. Now there are only 3 small tables and the handicapped table.
Wouldn’t Starbucks as the store owner want people to hang out in the shop? When I went in the last time, I decided to get my drink and go home since all the tables were occupied. Had I stayed in the store, I would have spent 10 - 15 dollars over 2-3 hours. Instead, I bought my drink and left. It seems that they don’t want customers to hang around. This is not cool, I hope they evaluate these decisions more throughly in the future. Besides keeping their bottom line, they should also consider the customers that bring them repeated business!
After the other day when I found this beatboxing video, I looked up more info on Rahzel. And I found this odd video. It obviously is not just him beat boxing on the song, instead he’s just rapping. I think that some of his sound effects were also mixed in. I don’t really know what this video is all about. But anyway, as I was watching it, I saw a few scenes that were. . . how can describe it? Lets just say I was distracted by the video so much that I missed the whole point of the song. Or does it even have one? who knows. Continue Reading “Rahzel video bizarre” »
You remember that guy, kept coming up in MTV. His name is Rahzel and he does a song titled “if your mamma only knew” and it is a cool song, it has a good beat and rhythm Continue Reading “better than Rahzel” »
We got into town last night, just fine. A little late because of the rain, but it wasn’t too bad. I have to say though, I am not impressed with Virgin America. Our flight had no entertainment system, and the seats are not any more comfortable than any of the other airlines I’ve flown in the past, I’ll tell you more about that later.
But in any case… now, I’m sitting at Cafe Royale, its a bar near my sister’s place. It is very eclectic I guess, they serve wine, and beer; they have a small art gallery and today they had Jazz for a while. They also have free wi-fi so that’s the main reason why I’m here.
Prosper Days starts tomorrow and its only 0.6 miles away from my sister’s place so that’s great. The only thing is that the weather has been kind of gloomy so far; hopefully it won’t rain when we head out in the morning. Registration starts at 7 and the sessions start at 9:00.
I have already had a blast today. My sister, girlfriend and I went to Golden Gate Park today. We walked by the De Young museum and took a tour of the Japanese Tea Garden. Then we walked around the Botanical Garden and that was very interesting as well.
The food so far has been great, We had Thai for dinner last night at Osha Thai Noodle. This morning we had breakfast at the Crepe House, and then dinner at Hotei Noodles. The girls are anxious to go back to the house so I will wrap it up for now. I’ll try to post some more tomorrow. Peace out.
I got a link to a news article from David, the article is about the University of Oxford’s study to determine the origins of faith in god.
Wired News - AP News
He said anthropological and philosophical research suggests that faith in God is a universal human impulse found in most cultures around the world, even though it has been waning in Britain and western Europe.
It seems that the leading figures in this study are in the mindset that religion is built-in to our systems. Do you think this would be an objective study?
“One implication that comes from this is that religion is the default position, and atheism is perhaps more in need of explanation,” Roger Trigg said.
Can you really prove that faith is innate?
I don’t think so. While history shows that societies in general have always had a religious inclination, I doubt that this trend will continue in the coming centuries or even millenia. As humanity, if we survive our conflicts of faith, then it is safe to say that science, the argument of reason and logical thinking will lead the way for future generations. I think that we’ve always been religious because we didn’t have any other way to explain our world around us. Our ancestors had to try to make sense of the rain, the sun coming up in the morning and setting down at night, other phenomena were simply unexplainable to them. Their explanation was that a “greater being” was in control of all this. We obviously now know that there is a scientific reason why things happen, and it is not magically designed.
Check this out. I found this the other day, very clever tool to have around. If you have seen any of my photos, you can see that I don’t have the steadiest hand. For that reason I have a number of stands for my cameras. I have 2 gorilla pods, one for my little elf SD1000, and a big one for an SLR. I also have a regular tripod. If I go shooting for a while, or to do HDR shots then I don’t mind taking my tripod with me. But for other everyday photos, this might be a very handy tool to have around.
$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The TripodI think I’ll take one of these to the rally coming up in a few weeks. I could see myself using this when trying to capture those cars flying by.This little home made gadget can help a lot with vertical shake and horizontal shake. I think it’s worth a try.
Really funny commercial from Budweiser. It is for Bud light, and its pretty damn funny. I could totally imagine a dog barking, over and over and over again, and all that is going through his head is “sausage, sausage, sausage”
I don’t know that the cat would say that, but the commercial is funny anyway.
When I go up to San Francisco for Prosper Days, I hope to get a little bit of sight seeing done around town. I’ve been to SF a few times now but I didn’t have my nice camera when I went last time. This time I got my SLR and hopefully I’ll get some good shots.
I really want to take some building shots so this past weekend I got a new lens. It’s an 11-18 mm and it’s very cool. It is way wider than I expected when I went to get it. Take a look.
