PJ and Leah Onori have a Weblog

www.theblogbitme.com

It's official. I have my own domain name. After much debate over domain names, the new blog will be at www.theblogbitme.com. We set it up today and it is live. I will now be writing on the new blog, but wanted to give you my forwarding address. The new blog is the standard design, so I will be learning quickly how to style my new blog. Yesterday I learned how to add YouTube links into my blog. Today I learned how to move this blog to the new domain name with the new software, so each day I am learning much on this cyber journey. C'mon and enjoy the ride at the new site!

p.s. please don't comment on this post---go comment at the new site (then we won't have to move over your comment!) thanks!

Evolution of Dance

Tonight I went to have dinner with my girlfriends. One of my friends showed this video from YouTube. It is absolutely great. It is one man's rendition of generations of dance moves, with the appropriate music---so funny. You can check it out below.

Lightbulbs

Today PJ and I went to Costco. We try to only go every couple months as everytime we go we spend way too much money. It is also insanely busy at the San Francisco location, so the less time you spend there, the better. But, today we went to Costco and came home with new energy efficient lightbulbs! We are very excited. Later as we were shopping for more items, an older Chinese woman stopped us and pointed to our lightbulbs and asked us in broken english how much they cost. It was so great to talk to her about the lightbulbs--everyone is buying the energy efficient lightbulbs! FYI--for a pack of 8 60 watt lightbulbs, it cost us $7.19. A pack of 4 100 watt lightbulbs is only $3.99. PJ has already risked his life to change the lightbulbs in our kitchen which are hard to reach with 10 foot ceilings. We are excited to try out our new lightbulbs tonight :)

Get out there and vote!

Did you get a I Voted sticker today? I didn't and am frankly a little bummed about it. But, I sent my absentee ballot in last week. For those of you interested in the California elections today, check out the preliminary results at the San Francisco Chronicle. For those of you who didn't vote---not naming any names of persons who may or may not live with me--you can register to vote at: League of Women Voters of California or at: California Secretary of State.

I know, I should have probably have posted this earlier to help remind people to make the polls, but since my readership is a slightly less than the San Francisco Chronicle, I think it will be OK. But, please, please, please make sure you are registered to vote for the November 2006 election.

Inconvenient

This past weekend PJ and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth with our friends (you know who you are). You can check out the official website at www.climatecrisis.net.

What does the word "inconvenient" mean?

The following is the entry from Merriam Webster's online dictionary.

Entry Word: inconvenient
Function: adjective
Text: 1) causing difficulty, discomfort, or annoyance; i.e. the unexpected visitors showed up at an inconvenient time 2) hard or impossible to get to or get at; i.e. for some reason, they placed the dishes in an inconvenient cabinet
Synonyms: awkward, discommoding, disobliging, incommoding
Related Words: bothersome, burdensome, onerous, troublesome; annoying, exasperating, irritating
Near Antonyms: acceptable, bearable, tolerable; advantageous, desirable, good, helpful
Antonyms: convenient

It seems to me that the meaning of the word inconvenient is subjective in some regards. What is convenient for me may be inconvenient for you and vice versa. So, how do you determine if something is convenient or inconvenient for you? Is there an internal set of criteria? Does it just depend on how you feel that day?

PJ hates crowded buses. PJ has to transfer downtown and take yet another MUNI to get to work, so his frustration with MUNI is easy to understand. If you have lived in San Francisco, you know that taking the MUNI downtown is a necessity as the parking is near impossible and will cost you a fortune. So, everyday we trudge to our bus stop and take the local MUNI downtown to work.

Today was a classic example of the our daily commute. We were packed in like sardines and the bus driver kept stopping at all the stops to let people abroad through the back doors. I love looking at other driver's expressions as they look over and notice how crowded our bus is as they nonchalantly drive downtown in the morning. I can almost read their minds as they shake their heads--poor bastards. This morning, however, as PJ grumbled about the mass of humanity on our bus, I just smiled, leaned over and whispered in his ear, "it's inconvenient". My comment at least made him laugh.

We loved the movie and recommend it highly to anyone interested--and even those who aren't interested! We are ashamed to admit that we still don't have the energy efficient lightbulbs. They are now on our shopping list. We also bought a TerraPass. But, that's another article.

A great sentence

"T[he] telephone and the PC are ubiquitous desk mates, separated by a few inches and about a century."

I remember sitting in a classroom while my teacher explained how to write the basic 5 paragraph essay. She advised to start out with a sentence that grabbed the reader's attention so that they would continue to read the rest of what you wanted to communicate. First lines of famous novels include:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

One of my favorite authors is Jane Austen. Here is one of her most famous opening lines from Pride and Prejudice:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Unfortunately, I live in a small San Francisco apartment and my humble library is boxed up and in storage at my parents house. So, I had to google these quotes to reproduce them verbatim. I found this site which is a little quiz to see how many famous first lines you know. Check out foldedspace.org and see how many you know.

So, if you have read to this point in this entry, you are probably wondering, but where did she find the opening quote? The answer---The NY Times of course! You may find this sentence at Internet Phones: Please Wait for the Next Available Opportunity . I love that an article about evolving technology is written by an author who takes such care to craft such an opening sentence.

Let me know if you have found a good sentence lately (opening or otherwise).

Memorial Day

I love waking up on days where I have the day off from work. I wake up happy to make a big pot of coffee and sit in my apartment surfing the internet on my Mac. Today I was reading the NY Times online, a staple to my daily internet surfing, and found this article about children who have lost parents in war. I was reading, wiping tears from my face and thinking of the children on the other side of war, who live in cities destroyed by bombs and chaos, without the opportunity to go to counseling, living without the support of lost family members. I then watched a NY Times video on Arlington--about how Arlington is running out of space for fallen soldiers. Will it end?

Idiots vs. Idiot

The Bush Administration vs. al-Zarqawi

The irony that both sides have had their failings with firearms did not get past me. It's very reassuring that one of them has the ability to push the red button and the other desperately wishes he did.

Cafe Lo Cubano

I have always loved cafes. When I was in college, I spent countless hours in nondescript cafes in Santa Barbara studying until closing time. I would be holed up in the corner, nursing one coffee and trying to be invisible so that no one would start staring me down to give up my table to "paying" customers. When I moved to San Francisco, I worked at Starbucks while finishing up my Master's degree in English. A bit of the magic aura of a coffeshop did vanish while I was mopping the floors at closing time and kicking out the last of the college students on the other side of the counter. However, I met my husband at that Starbucks..... He was the guy who ordered the venti mocha, with non-fat milk. I have gone through various phases of "regular" drinks. The mocha, the vanilla latte, the regular coffee, and now, the cafe con leche. My husband and I now frequent a cafe on the other end of the block from that infamous Starbucks called Cafe Lo Cubano. During the day, this cafe is too trendy for us, however, at night, it calms down to a relaxing retreat. We often walk there to unwind from a long day of work to chat and skim the newspaper over steamy espresso drinks. We also have taken some night photos both inside and outside the cafe during our various trips. I am personally still a novice at night photography, or low light situations in general, but here are a few photos that have turned out. We use old Nikons--a FE2 and FT2 respectively.

This photo is taken from our regular table. I am a sucker for symmetry and repeating subjects.

A nostolgic photo, this reminds me of mopping the back hallways during my barista days.

One of my husband's photos--this is the MUNI stop right outside the cafe. A beautiful shot.

This photo is the first one from this cafe. Once again, this great shot was taken by my husband.

Headlines

Today I was reading the NY Times online. Most days, you find the headlines filled with war, violence, dispair, and corruption. However, today, I found a headline that grabbed my attention for its humanity. Dose of Tenacity Wears Down a Horrific Disease is about former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's foundation, The Carter Center , which has led a campaign for over 20 years to help fight against a disease called Guinea worm. It is a fascinating article. It reminds me how the most basic things I take for granted, like clean water, are truly a luxury. I am very encouraged to see how Jimmy Carter has advocated for humanitarian causes and used his name to promote issues such as fighting diseases that are curable in his post-presidential years. I hope our other U.S. presidents follow Carter's example.

SOME RANDOM DUDE hits Technorati's Top 10,000

While this may not seem like a bit accomplishment to most, I am quite happy. I have really devoted a lot of time into somerandomdude.net in the past few months and it has really paid off. I am currently ranked at 9,862 - most of which is due to my Sanscons project. I never would have thought the blog would have taken off so fast and I'm really happy to know all the work is actually beginning to draw people to the site.

So now all three of you that read this blog know why there haven't been too many new posts by yours truly at this blog. Luckily, my beautiful wife is more than taking up the void.

a little game...

Our friend, Yousuf, has his new website up. Go check it out at Counter-Flow.com. The splash page is really in true Yousuf style. The main page is great as well. I love the motion, music and overall feeling of the design. Yousuf also put in a little mystery to his site. There are three Easter eggs that you have to find on the site. Happy hunting!

Rain, Rain, Rain, Rain...

It has been a rainy couple of days in San Francisco and it doesn't look like there is an end in sight. According to weather.com, it will be raining non-stop through next week.

Rain brings out the full range of human emotions. On Sunday, the rain gave us a good excuse to be lazy and take afternoon naps--we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the raindrops against our window pain. Later on, however, we walked to Trader Joe's only to be caught in a torrential downpour. The wind threatened to make our umbrella a martyr and we had to wrestle it back from the edge of umbrella death. If any of you take MUNI or any form of public transportation on a regular basis, this could be the best laboratory to test humanity during the inclement weather. This morning we watched a woman on crutches succomb to the huge moat surrounding the curbs downtown--she ended up with a soaked foot that went far above her ankles. It makes me think that most people are like cats. Rain is great when you are inside, cozy and warm, with tea and a good book. But, once you are outside, you start to curse the rain when your clothes become drenched by a lashing rain that does not let up. People have all kinds of defenses in the rain. There are those that bundle up in Gore-Tex, those that sport huge golf umbrellas, those with wimpy travel size umbrellas and then those who try to pretend that they really meant to leave the house without an umbrella. Don't get me wrong, I actually love the rain, but I must confess, even I become a little disgruntled when I can't dry off after becoming one of mother nature's victims. Well see how the next week goes--PJ is already swearing off MUNI for the next week after tonight's adventure of being packed like sardines in a wet, musty bus, fighting our way back home.

Bush Veto?

For anyone out there who missed today's biggest headline, here it is: Bush Would Veto Any Bill Halting Dubai Port Deal. Bush's foreign policy and economic policy seem to be in tension. For the past few years, I have heard Bush repeat that we are fightin' 'em over there so that we don't have to fight 'em over here. Whoever 'em is, I still haven't figured out. Yet, I think that the business men from the United Arab Emirates may not feel welcome when they arrive and are subject to the Department of Homeland Security's Special Registration requirement. Free trade, come one, come all, but sir, could you first let us take your fingerprints?

Bush playing the ol' switch-a-roo

Funds restored to energy lab before Bush visit taken from CNN

On the eve of a presidential visit to a renewable energy lab in Colorado, the Department of Energy said it has transferred $5 million to the operation, which had funding cut and employees laid off this month due to budget shortfalls.

May I also suggest that the $15 million that Bush promised in his state of the union for renewable resources is a drop in the huge bucket of billions this administration gives to the oil companies in subsidies.

Dude, no one is buying it.