adrian is rad

It’s a sad day. Every Pittsburgher knows exactly what Myron Cope meant to the city and to the Steelers.

I read RFK’s[1] Thirteen Days today [2].

This is RFK’s memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Note: that’s different than the Bay of Pigs.) Basically the USSR put nuclear-equipped missiles in Cuba while publicly claiming they weren’t. There was a period of thirteen days between when the intelligence regarding the presence of missiles and the Soviet’s agreement to withdraw them. People often say this is the closest the world came to nuclear war (so far).

It’s pretty dryly written, but still very interesting. There’s something really fascinating about how people act and react under intense pressure and stress. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that there was a happy ending.

One thing that I found pretty interesting was the role the Guns of August played in the whole situation. It’s a book about the time and decisions leading up to World War I. Apparently JFK and other took this book under special consideration in how they made their decisions regarding the Cuban situation. Imagine how cool it would be to be Barbara Tuchman–you would have helped prevent nuclear war. Not a bad thing to put on a gravestone.

[1] The more I read about RFK, the more I like. There’s something about his radical Catholicism that makes me think that if I was a more charismatic and better person I could be like him. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had he not been assassinated.

[2] Yeah, I read the entire thing today. Granted, it clocks in at 100 pages including forward, but it felt good to read a whole book in a day. It don’t do that much. The last time I did it was the Perks of Being a Wallflower (and the one previous to that was my second reading of Ender’s Game).

It’s been just over three weeks since I moved to San Francisco.

It’s been going pretty well. I like the place I’m living. It’s a nice space and my roommates are nice. I’m close to BART (and BART is close to work). The neighborhood is flat so I can bike around it without too much trouble. Within a few blocks I have a grocery stand, a supermarket, a few bars and a lot of restaurants (mostly Taquerias–I picked the wrong neighborhood given that I’m only so-so on Mexican food).

I don’t think I realized how much I disliked driving. It’s a semi-walkable city so even stuff outside my neighborhood I can get to by walking. Public transportation is decent but the Trip Planner is extremely useful. NextMuni is even better; bus and light rail times-to-arrival based off of GPS.

It’s not all roses. Things are more expensive. Yogurts, which I buy for my lunches, are about 2x the cost. The drive into KZSU on Tuesdays at 5:15am is some simple but intense sort of torture.

In case you haven’t seen it. There are even shirts.

In Mexico I had a Pepsi Retro.

It has “natural ingredients” and “no artificial flavors or colors” (that’s what the Spanish says, I think). As we know, I like my sodas sans corn syrup.

It has an old timey taste. Jesse tried it as well and said the same thing. I liked it. Generally I like Coke a lot better than Pepsi but if Pepsi Retro was available in Estados Unidos (apparently it’s Mx only), I might even buy it over regular coke (though probably not over Mexican Coke (w/ sugar rather than corn syrup) in a glass bottle, which is available in some stores around me.

watch Teen Jeopardy. It’s easy.

I think I missed one clue in today’s Double Jeopardy round.

I’ll be in Ixtapa/ Zihuatanejo for a few days. Be back early next week.

In our modern world, borders still change. I find this fascinating. Particularly this list of territorial disputes. I mean, there’s even a dispute between Georgia and Tennessee.

One of the most ridiculous things is the territorial claims of the Republic of China (Taiwan, in common terms), illustrated well in this wikipedia graphic:

In many ways the real crazies seem to hang out on this list of active autonomist and secessionist movements.

You can get more channels without any extra cost. 3 channels from one PBS affiliate! Two from the ABC affiliate!

But here’s the thing, on the secondary channels, they show the stuff that’s not good enough to put on the main channel. Given what’s on the main channel is crap, this stuff is a few levels up on the crap ladder.

About 11pm at about 20th and Valencia on Friday, a guy half in my path said to me as I walked around him: “Come on, man. Are you going to go home and watch TV or are you going to be a real motherfucker?”

I really didn’t know how to answer.

The bulk of my dad’s cautionary advice has been about the following three topics:

1. avoiding going into debt
2. avoiding excess sun exposure/ skin cancer
3. avoiding excess sound exposure/ hearing loss

Last night, Dug, jwerberg, Helene (and a couple others) and I went to Lucky Ju Ju, which a pinball museum in Alameda. You pay $10 admission and then all the machines are on free play. You can play as many as you want! There are some really old gems as well as some modern oddities, like one with a convoluted surface that makes the ball jump around in a crazy way (it’s a Martian theme, or something) and a soccer one that’s timed rather than a given number of balls–you have to score more times than letting the balls through the paddles. This place is a total blast.

It’s got pretty weird hours (6pm-midnight Friday and Saturday, 4-8pm Sunday), but it’s worth a trip or ten.

Here’s one flickr photo set.

My wrists still hurt from all that pinballing!

Best entertainment for the money around here outside of Musee Mechanique.

Last night, I ended up walking from the Sunset to my place via Tank Hill (that is, a steep hill to walk up and then down again; also it has a pretty sweet view of a large chunk of the city).

Boston you could walk across in a few hours and it was pretty flat so no knee problems or anything. I remember being exhausted after walking a lot one day and figuring out that I’d walked 11 miles that day. I was pretty pooped after yesterday’s 5ish (the above walk + some miscellaneous stuff) miles.

But I’m really liking being able to walk places. That’s fun.

This is the January 2008 mixtape; yup, it’s late. I took a bit of a break–there was no December 2007 one, the first one I missed since I started these in July 2006. I’m going to try to get back on track for this one.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007Jan playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. I’m liking this one. A wide range of new stuff, some oldies and some old favorites.

Adrian’s January 2008 mix tape (rapidshare link [1])

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) chose a mirror (or you can leave it) 4) input the number/ letters they show in the graphic into the box 5) click on “download via…”

The strangest alternative-Super-Bowl TV ever had to have been Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. Did anyone see this?

There have been Bud Bowls and Celebrity Death Matches, but putting a bunch of puppies (and kitties, for the half-time show) on a small field-looking play area and filming them? That’s absurd.

Also, we missed at least one or two plays of the actual Super Bowl watching it.

Decisions: do I bike the Wiggle or take one of ‘em Muni buses?

Oh learning new things in a new city!

Drinking is one of the most common responses to the stress of being an expat — most expats don’t recognize how stressed they are.

Yes, that makes sense.