adrian is rad

Seen in Palo Alto. And, of course, they’re sold in packs of 50.

I saw Pepsi Natural at Target the other day. You know how much I love sodas made with real sugar rather than corn syrup, so it should be no surprise that I picked some up.

It’s very very sweet, but it doesn’t taste syrupy. It’s got a more nuanced taste than the standard colas. The kola nut, I believe, gives it a sort of bitter, almost coffeeish overtone. I love drinking sodas out of glass bottles. Pretty good stuff.

I think I still like Mexican Coke better, but this stuff is a reasonable substitute.

I uploaded my mixtape to an archive folder and included all of 28ish mixtapes over the last 2.5 years. Email me if you want access and I’ll send the location and password.

yellowed page out of my circa 1992 Tim Wakefield scrapbook

Here’s some baseball stuff that I’ve seen recently.

Tim Wakefield, who, yes, I’ve followed since his Pirates days, had a no-hitter through 7 1/3 last week. He’s 45, has been in the majors 17 years and he’s never had a no-no, as they call them. Watch the highlights or read more.

A Ranger named Ian Kinsler had a 6 hit game including the cycle last week. Highlights. He has two singles, two doubles, a triple and a home run. How’s that for a good game?

Do you realize the Pirates are 0.600 and are a game out of first? Crazy. Can it last? We can—and should—hope.

The new Yankee stadium has overpriced seats and the four games in there are already empty seats.

Chris McGreal, the now-former Guardian Africa correspondent writes a long and interesting piece about Africa during his dozen or so years there.

Andy sent me an email that made my day. It was an mp3 he’d ripped from a 7″ in the collection of his grandfather, who had lived in SE Pennsylvania. It was Pennsylvania Dutch stand up comedy. It was so weird and wonderful that I had a grin for hours.

Here it is. Like I said, you’re welcome.

Prof. (Herman E.) Schnitzel – Schussel Along with Schnitzel (mp3)
[audio:http://ipickmynose.com/mp3s/Schussel%20Along%20with%20Schnitzel.mp3]

Believe it or not, Schussel along with Schnitzel is available for purchase.

the 14 Mission

So I’m thinking it might be a fun project to ride all the Muni bus, lightrail and cable car lines. As you can see below, I have ridden a decent number but I have plenty to go.

I’ve decided that all iterations of one number count as one line; for instance, 14/ 14L and 14X all count as one line. I’m not sure about some of those 80-somethingX shuttle lines. We’ll see if they count.

Here’s the list of the lines, crossing out the ones I’ve ridden.

• F-Market & Wharves*
• J-Church
• KT-Ingleside/Third Street
• L-Taraval
• M-Ocean View
• N-Judah*
• S-Castro Shuttle
• 1-California
• 2-Clement
• 3-Jackson
• 4-Sutter
• 5-Fulton
• 6-Parnassus
• 7-Haight
• 9-San Bruno
• 10-Townsend
• 12-Folsom / Pacific*
• 14-Mission*
• 16*X-Noriega * Exp
• 17-Park Merced
• 18-46th Avenue
• 19-Polk
• 20-Columbus
• 21-Hayes
• 22-Fillmore
• 23-Monterey
• 24-Divisadero*
• 26-Valencia
• 27-Bryant*
• 28-19th Avenue
• 29-Sunset
• 30-Stockton
• 31-Balboa
• 33-Stanyan*
• 35-Eureka
• 36-Teresita
• 37-Corbett
• 38-Geary
• 39-Coit
• 41-Union
• 43-Masonic
• 44-O’Shaughnessy
• 45-Union/Stockton
• 47-Van Ness**
• 48-Quintara – 24th Street*
• 49-Mission-Van Ness*
• 52-Excelsior
• 53-Southern Heights
• 54-Felton
• 56-Rutland
• 66-Quintara
• 67-Bernal Heights
• 71-Haight-Noriega
• 74x-Culture Bus
• 76-Marin Headlands
• 80X-Gateway Express
• 81X-Caltrain Express
• 82X-Presidio Express
• 88-B.A.R.T. Shuttle
• 89-Laguna Honda
• 90-Owl
• 91-Owl
• 108-Treasure Island
• Powell-Mason Cable Car
• Powell-Hyde Cable Car
• California Street Cable Car

*I’ve ridden these lines more times than I can remember.

**I’m 99.9% sure I’ve ridden this at least once.

Update 4/24/09 rode the 26 Valencia, 67 Bernal Heights and J Church. (also, realized that I’d ridden the J Church once before last May).

Update 4/26/09 rode the 21 Hayes for half a dozen stops.

Update 4/30/09 rode the Powell-Mason cable car, the California cable car and the 19 Polk.

Update 5/3/09 rode the 28 19th Ave and the L Taraval.

Update 5/20/09 rode the 30 Stockton.

On Sunday, I went to the BYOBW (warning: annoying auto-play music), Bring Your Own Big Wheel event. It’s a race down Vermont Street with a Big Wheel, kid’s tricycle, or really any sort of non-powered transportation method. This is the 9th annual one, though only the second on Vermont. Previously it was on the more famous and not quite as dangerous Lombard.

the organizer was the first down the track

my friend Alan is in the white helmet

guys dressed as Koosh balls walked down the course at some point for no apparent reason

View my full photo album.

I’m against taxis on principle. They’re usually really expensive and I should just walk or take a bus if it’s available. But occasionally the other options aren’t good/ available.

• 3/22/09 2am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/20/09 1:30am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/12/09 1:30am, San Francisco (getting home with Dave and Tina after a show because their flight was early the next day)
• 2/17/09 10pm San Francisco (splitting a taxi back from the airport with coworkers)
• 2/16/09 6:05pm Lahaina, HI (with two others, getting back to the hotel after a 20 mile hike and 2 bus rides because the last bus/ shuttle stopped 6-7pm for the driver’s dinner)
• 12/17/07 5pm Taipei, TW (from work with two coworkers at their insistence)
• 12/09/07 1am Taipei, TW (post-subway hours trip back to my hotel)
• 12/3/07 8:30am Taipei, TW (to work after a bus came that was too full to fit on)

That’s right, I don’t think I took a cab in 2008.

Also, I have no idea why I thought I should make this list.

If you’d like to ship some things via the the Postal Service (and have them see you waving from such great heights–no that’s not right…), how much should you mail at once? Basically, is it better to ship a lot of small boxes or a few big boxes?

I went through and figured it out for you based on their current rate chart. If you have media (books, CDs, notebooks, etc.), definitely do that, as media mail’s really cheap.

For media mail, the per pound price flattens out pretty quickly. You actually don’t get any break after 54lb (it’s all $0.38/lb at that point), but anything above 25lb is within 15% of that lowest per pound price.

On the other hand, parcel post–which takes equivalent amount of time as media mail but covers other types of contents–continues to decrease all the way through 70lb. To get within 15% of the per pound price of $0.73, you need to ship 55lb or more.

If what you’re planning to ship via parcel post is particularly dense and you only have a little bit to ship, priority mail flat rate boxes might actually turn out to be a good deal.

I believe in both cases, the cheapest option is to package things into the fewest number of boxes and evenly split the weight between the two.

Note, I believe this information is accurate as of April 2009, but make no guarantees after that.

This is my last day without caffeine.

It’s been interesting. I had some caffeine on Sundays–usually one per–but otherwise I survived. I had two non-caffeinated sodas on other days. Some days I didn’t miss it at all and some days when I was a pile of yawns, I thought hard about having something to get me out of it.

Longer term, I’m hoping to keep it to a more reasonable level.

For the curious, in lieu of soda, my consumption of the following increased: water, juice, rooibos and beer.

WHY NOT WASH YOUR HANDS?

Protect the water you swim in and the health of those you swim with. Keep poop out of the pool by washing your hands.

Is that necessary? Was their a rash of problems with feces in the water?