RIP, Bill Walsh

Bill Walsh died today. I know he was an old man and a sick man (leukemia), but nevertheless, hearing the news made me sad. Maybe the Niners will kick ass this season, in honor of his legacy.

bouncy castle!

Today was bouncy castle day!

A coworker had a belated birthday BBQ at his house, and in the backyard, next to the grill, was a 15ft-by-15ft bouncy castle. Apparently, it isn't too common for adults to rent bouncy castles for their own use; most of the clients are people wanting to rent them for their kids' birthday parties. The one we were using was the one normally "recommended for teens", not that there's much difference between a bunch of teenagers and a bunch of twenty-somethings of questionable maturity.

Anyway, it was loads of fun! We spent several hours cycling between eating, drinking, chatting & digesting, jumping, and getting tired and going back for more food. Several people were able to do backflips (not me), no one got hurt and/or sick, and we managed to keep the dogs from doing any harm to the rented equipment. Awesome idea, demonstrating once again that my coworkers are brilliant.

5 hours

...plus or minus a few minutes.

After karaoke-ing until 2am on Friday, I didn't get to Costco until around 10:30am on Saturday morning. With the typical weekend lines, and me stopping for a Very Berry Sundae, I didn't get home with my copy of Deathly Hallows until 11:15am. I read until 1:45pm, which was actually fifteen minutes later than I had planned; I had to run some errands in the city before heading over to Oakland to watch the A's play the Orioles. The game ended at 9pm, I got home at 9:45pm, showered and changed into pj's, and started in again at around 10:15pm. I finally finished around 12:45am, so I was able to sleep in peace.

I won't spoil the book here, but I will say I liked it much better than I liked the fifth Harry Potter movie last weekend.

1800flowers sucks

A month ago, I ordered a cute bouquet of flowers in a blue piggy bank, for a friend who had just had a baby. The flowers were delivered on the same day, but the piggy bank never appeared. I called 1800flowers and was told that the florist was out of piggy banks, but it would be delivered later that week.

The next week, my friend still hadn't received the piggy bank, so I called again, and was told that the florist still hadn't received the piggy banks, but he was expecting them to arrive the following week. The customer service rep issued me a $10 gift certificate applicable towards a future purchase, for the inconvenience.

The following week I was vacationing in Canada, so I didn't bother to check, but after I got back, I discovered the piggy bank still hadn't arrived. I called yet again, and was told that the florist was expecting the piggy banks to arrive any day. The customer service rep offered to issue me a refund, but at this point I figured I might as well wait it out.

This morning, after a month of waiting, I called 1800flowers again and was told that the florist still hadn't received the piggy banks, and in fact he was waiting for them to arrive from 1800flowers. So, I asked the rep, since she worked for 1800flowers, when the expected arrival date might be. She said she had no idea. I asked if it would be another year, and she said no. I asked if it would be another month, and she said she had no idea. I asked who I could talk to that would be able to give me more information, and she gave me a number for "corporate headquarters" which I could call if I wanted.

I called that number and discovered it was a wrong number, so I called back and talked to a different rep. This one was actually sympathetic and took the time to call several florists and locate one who actually did have the piggy bank in stock. (Why this couldn't have been done a month ago, I don't know.) He said he would cancel with the original florist and order with the new florist. I hung up the phone somewhat satisfied.

Twenty minutes later, he called me and asked me to contact the florist directly, to give her my credit card number. I was confused; hadn't I been charged already? He said that 1800flowers would issue me a refund and that I would be charged again by the new florist. Fine.

I called the florist and gave her my credit card number, and she said she was going to charge me for the entire order, flowers and piggy bank together. I was a bit worried about this, since I wasn't sure 1800flowers was going to refund me the entire amount, so I asked her to ship just the piggy bank. She said that was fine, but the delivery charge was as much as the cost of the piggy bank itself. I told her to hold that order.

I called 1800flowers back and talked to yet another rep, who said the refund was for the cost of the piggy bank. After several minutes of me complaining, she agreed to refund me the delivery charge as well.

Just now, I called the florist and told her she could process the order, delivery fee and all. We'll see if all these charges and refunds actually come out right on my credit card bill.

Regardless, I'm never ordering from 1800flowers again.

four weekends at home

I'm going to be in town for four consecutive weekends, counting from this past weekend. Amazingly, that hasn't happened since March. It gets better: I may not get on a plane again until Thanksgiving. We shall see.

It was nice being home. I got to do things like run errands and try to organize away all the piles of stuff in my house. I even did several fun things: I went shopping with my sister, ate at a new restaurant (Ame, highly recommended), saw the new Harry Potter movie (so-so, wait for DVD), went to (nearly 3 hours of) basketball practice, and wound up the weekend by having a whole bunch of people over for a Starcraft LAN party.

pink donuts

Today, one of my coworkers brought in a box of the Pink Donuts from one of the 7-Elevens renovated as Kwik-E-Marts (to celebrate the release of the Simpsons Movie). The donuts were impressively pink; noticeably pinker than the pink box in which they had come. Plus, I had a fourth of a donut, and now I don't think I can eat anything for the next five hours.

camping in the Canadian Rockies

Two weeks ago, I went with a couple of college friends on a camping trip in the Canadian Rockies. (Incidentally, it's kind of scary that I've now known them for over ten years.) Anyway, one friend had just graduated with his PhD in physics, and another was between jobs (he had just moved across the country with his wife so she could start her ER residency), so the two of them decided to go on vacation while they were unemployed. Although I had no such excuse, I did have a bunch of vacation accrued, so I invited myself to go with them. The plan was to fly into Calgary, drive up to Mount Robson Provincial Park, hike the Berg Lake trail for a few days, take another day to drive back slowly along Jasper and Banff National Parks, and then wind up the trip with a day in Calgary.

I've actually never been on a multi-night camping trip before; one involving several days of backpacking, pitching tents, and no real bathrooms (although I was very happy there were pit toilets, which turned out to be no worse than port-o-potties). I did quickly discover that hiking with 30+ lbs on your back is very different from hiking with only a daypack, but we had planned cautiously (~45 km over three days), so everything turned out quite well. We only encountered bears while we were still in the car, no one got hurt (unless you count 20-30 mosquito bites), we didn't lose anything significant (one pocketknife), and my 15-degree sleeping bag proved warm enough for the freezing temperatures at night. And, of course, everywhere the scenery was varied and spectacular.

Here are some photos from the trip:

bighorn sheep	a black bear!	first day's ascent
lunchtime lake view	second day, rocky footing	one of many waterfalls
one of several glaciers near second campsite	Peyto Lake	Athabasca Falls

I much enjoyed the time that we spent in Mount Robson, Jasper, and Banff National Parks, Lake Louise was almost as pretty as advertised, and the towns of Jasper and Banff weren't bad either, but I was kind of disappointed by Calgary. Although it's Canada's third most populous city (after Toronto and Montreal; bigger than Vancouver!), it felt like a gigantic suburb to me. Honestly, the highlight of the last day was our stop at the Bernard Callebaut flagship store. Good chocolate, though.

location, location, location

I love the Bay Area climate. I love the chilly San Francisco summers, the thick blankets of fog, the crazy block-level micro-climates, and the fact that it doesn't rain from April until November.

But, last weekend in Seattle, I found myself marveling at the way the lakes and bays integrate into the rolling hills, and the lush greenness of everything. If only it weren't so completely dreary in the winter...

Maybe I can live in the Pacific Northwest from June to September, come back to the Bay Area for the fall, head to Taipei from December through March, and then find some kind of non-allergy-inducing climate for the spring. That might be just a teeny bit expensive, though.

puzzling

Yesterday I looked up and realized the year was half over. I can't quite decide if I'm depressed because time is passing so quickly, or whether it's a good thing that I've made it through half the craziness of this year without having collapsed of exhaustion.

Two weekends ago I joined a puzzle hunt with a bunch of my coworkers. It was the first annual company puzzle hunt, and it ended up being really fun; more fun that I had remembered from YABA treasure hunts in the city, probably because it involved more puzzling and less walking.

We started Saturday morning at 9am, and officially the hunt ended Sunday evening at 6pm, but unfortunately I had to leave around midnight on Saturday, so I could go to a morning wedding on Sunday without looking like I had just stayed up all night.

One of the first puzzles involved eighteen short written chapters, and the following description: "I hear there's a lot of overlap between authors and the characters they write, no matter how different they may seem." It turned out that we had to read through each passage and analyze the content and the style. The content described a particular character, and the style suggested a similarly named author. For example, one text was written in the style of Homer's Odyssey, and described Homer Simpson. Another chapter described Eliot Ness and was strongly reminiscent of T.S. Eliot's poetry. Once we had puzzled out all of the authors and characters, it wasn't too hard to find the final solution word.

Other puzzle, entitled "Geologist", was hidden inside a fake rock, buried in a sand volleyball court. Inside the rock were 15 words printed on small scraps of paper, and a fake gem attached to a date: 1/29/1773. We determined the date was the birthdate of Friedrich Mohs, inventor of the Mohs hardness scale for gems. From there, we were able to piece together the 15 words into 5 phrases, each of which described a phrase that included a gem name. For instance, "Falkinburg's ring name" was "Diamond Dallas Page". After some frustration, we were able to find an anagram of the answer word using the Mohs hardness of each gem as an index into the gemstone phrase.

I was pretty actively involved in solving the above two puzzles, as well as another involving RNA sequences, amino acids, and codon tables, and one which required folding twenty pieces of paper in a certain configuration to create a polyhedron, but I was completely clueless on several others. In particular, one puzzle required that we listen to 9 tracks of music and determine the meter of each, in order to find a number sequence. Luckily, one of our team members had a background in music and was quickly able to solve that part of the puzzle for us.

In the end, we finished 5th or 6th out of 21 teams, which wasn't bad considering most of our team members weren't experienced puzzle hunters. It's very likely that I'll be reserving the whole weekend next time, for the second annual puzzle hunt.