proper English

I was amused by this exchange following a "Pimp My Ride" reference in a post:

coworker #1:

The objection I have to "Pimp my Ride" is largely the name. It's a noun used as a verb, followed by a verb used as a noun. I'm not even very comfortable with the "my" either -- the protagonists of the piece are not "pimping" my "ride", but I as the viewer am observing whilst this act befalls a third party entirely unbeknown to me. A more correct title would be "Television programme wherein individuals have outlandish enhancements made to their vehicles."

coworker #2:

I can only conclude that you would have fewer objections to a show entitled Ride my Pimp.

california love

A few days ago, a friend and I were discussing how high California's taxes are. We currently have the sixth highest state income tax at 10.6% (trailing New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island), and the highest sales tax at 8.25% (not counting local taxes). She laughed at me when I concluded "it sucks here, too bad it's so nice". Admittedly that was not my best communication moment, but I think both of us understood what I was trying to say. It really is very hard for me to imagine living anywhere else, and as much as I complain about costs, it's still a no-brainer for me to stay.

Tangentially, I recently ran across this quote which amused me:
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world. -- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

you know you're old when...

...no matter what kind of social gathering you're at, if there are ten or more people, at least one has had knee surgery. Sigh.

more Vosges bars

I've been obsessed with Vosges chocolates for several years now, so when D went on his business trip to Vegas and asked me if I wanted anything, I rattled off a list of new Vosges bars that I wanted to try. I asked him to buy "three or four" but apparently there was some special bulk discount so he came home with six!

I've now tried all of them, and some were noticeably better than others. In reverse order of preference:

Blood Orange Caramel: blood orange + Campari + burnt sugar caramel + hibiscus flowers, 70% cacao dark chocolate. This one was terrible. It sounded delicious, but when I tried to break the bar into pieces, the caramel came spilling out. The blood orange and Campari were supposed to be tart enough to offset the caramel, but they weren't. I may not even finish this one.

Marzipan: Sicilian almond marzipan + amaretto, 62% cacao dark chocolate. Like the Blood Orange bar, this bar consisted of chocolate filled with gooey stuff inside. I'm not a fan; I prefer the ingredients blended into the chocolate itself. I guess I'll have to read the descriptions more carefully in the future, so I can avoid these. On the bright side, in this case the marzipan was not as sweet as the caramel, so although I disliked the texture, the taste was okay.

Bapchi's Caramel Toffee: Sweet butter toffee + walnuts + pecans, 45% cacao deep milk chocolate. After the experience with the Blood Orange bar, I was afraid of anything labelled "Caramel" but I was pleasantly surprised; in this case it was just caramel flavor in the crispy toffee. If this had been a dark chocolate bar I would have liked it even better, as it was a little bit sweet, but it was good anyway (I've nearly finished it already).

Peppermint Candy Cane: all natural candy cane + peppermint, 62% cacao dark chocolate. For once, the bar tasted just like it sounded. It was yummy but not very exciting.

Cherry Rooibos: African rooibos tea + dried Michigan cherries, 45% cacao deep milk chocolate. This one was D's favorite, and my second favorite. The tea gave it a nice exotic flavor, and the cherries reminded me of one of my all-time favorite Vosges bars, the Goji bar. Although it was milk chocolate, we did not find it too sweet, and between the two of us, we finished this bar within a week.

Gingerbread Toffee: gingerbread spiced toffee, 65% cacao dark chocolate. I liked this one the best. The spiced toffee was subtle, crunchy, and delicious with the dark chocolate. Unfortunately it seems to be a seasonal bar as I can no longer find it on the Vosges website.

Overall, I think Gingerbread Toffee and Cherry Rooibos have joined Mo's Bacon Bar (the dark chocolate version) and the Goji bar as my favorite bars. As far as the truffles go, I'm still waiting for spring so I can order the Green Collection...

unexpected benefits

I finally went to a PT today about my knee, since I'd had some trouble on Monday at kickboxing and then yesterday at basketball.

She diagnosed me with an MCL strain/sprain, and said that it should be recovered by 4-6 weeks from the date of injury, which is about 1.5-3.5 weeks from now. She also massaged it for awhile and said that it was healing a little "lumpy" and that I should massage and then ice it every day to keep it smooth, so it would form "good" scar tissue (that won't hinder movement or cause pain in the future).

We then had the following exchange:

her:	Your range of motion is surprisingly good, though. Usually sitting eight hours a day is bad for properly stretching out a healing MCL.
me:	Oh, I have a standing desk.
her:	Aha, that explains it. Yup, that probably saved your range of motion. I won't suggest additional stretching, then.

sweeeet

$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 24739480 kB

(finally rebooted to install my new RAM)

conflict

I just realized why I keep missing episodes of House. My cheapo Dish DVR cannot tape House, Chuck, and How I Met Your Mother at the same time. I guess I should be thankful for Hulu.

very cool

I'm sitting at my desk around 5:30pm yesterday and I get a chat message from one of the front desk guys at the gym. He asks me if my phone was in a soft Droid case. I try not to get too excited, but I confirm that yes, it's a Samsung Nexus S with the special "tiny androids" backplate and it's in a Nexus One soft case. He says, "I think we have your phone."

I run over to the gym and confirm that yes, in fact, it is my phone. Unfortunately there's no way to unsend the wipe signal, so pretty much as soon as I unlock it, it does a factory reset on itself, and now I'm busy reinstalling all my apps and reconfiguring all my settings. I'm not complaining, though!

At first I thought I really might have been so stupid as to have just let it fall out of my bag, but then I called T-Mobile to re-enable the service, and the phone still didn't work. I opened up the back cover, and the SIM card was installed upside down. Also, the battery was at over 90%. Clearly, the phone had not been on all weekend without a charger.

Anyway, I'm really really stoked to have my phone back! And, I think it's time to invest in a padlock.

not cool

I went to the gym today at lunchtime, as I always do on Fridays. I went to the locker room, changed, put my things in my gym bag, put the bag in a locker (no lock, like all lockers in our gyms), and went to class. After class I showered and changed back, and then looked for my phone, which I had put in a pocket of my bag. I couldn't find it.

I was pretty sure I'd had it on me, so I checked the locker again, and then the bag. I still couldn't find it, so I went back to my desk and checked my purse. No phone.

I went on Latitude and tracked myself. My last known location was 11:51am at the gym.

I called my phone. It went straight to voicemail.

I called the gym. They hadn't found any phones.

I called security. They were able to tell me that I swiped into the gym at 11:48am, but as there were no security cameras in the locker room (duh), they couldn't do much else for me. They also said no phones had been found.

I called techstop, and they sent a wipe command to my phone. They advised me to wait a few hours to see if the thief would attempt to turn on the phone, thus executing the wipe, and then to file a police report and call my carrier.

The City of Mountain View has a nice online form, so I filed a report immediately.

Looks like I'll be talking to T-Mobile tonight.

I'm pretty bummed that I lost my brand-new unlocked smartphone, not to mention my SIM card. I'm also sad that someone here at work would steal from a fellow employee. Plus, I feel oddly naked without a phone. Sigh.

#10 in progress

Conversation with a coworker:

me:	It's done! I have plane tickets to Chicago and a reservation at Alinea in April.
him:	So, you're flying to Chicago to eat at a restaurant.
me:	Umm, no. I'm flying to Chicago because D has a business trip anyway, and to visit my brother, who wants to go to Alinea too.
him:	Heh, okay whatever.

(I also want to eat at Hot Doug's and go to The Violet Hour.)