Posts tagged "weeknotes" - nolan caudill's internet house

Week Roundup: 2024-09-02

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 14:28:17 +0000

Fogwall over the bay, Aug 28

Today is Labor Day and due to a work perk (a Friday off every month), I am on day 3 of a 4 day weekend. Often weekends are a bust as far as moving anything forward, but we got some good stuff done this weekend.

Around the house

Cleaned out the whole garage! Ezra was biking in the driveway and while I was out there, I started to clear off the workbench that had been buried in “things that need to go elsewhere.” When the bench was clear, I kept going. And by the end of it we had a swept, tidy (well, tidier) garage with a small pile of things to throw away or donate. The notable find: a slightly expired MRE (meals-ready-to-eat) package. The kids sampled a cookie that probably taste stale when it was “freshly” baked, and found it passable.

On Saturday night, we had a family over with similar aged boys and while they watched a movie and played laser tag, we enjoyed a bottle or two of wine and some adult conversation in relative peace and quiet.

New fun toy: I had read that robot vacuums had gotten much smarter since our last one 5 years ago and set a new one up. Now with the mapping and no-go zones set up, the war against dustballs and cat hair has turned. The other bonus of having a robot vacuum on a schedule is motivation to keep the kids’ toys off the floor. Win, win.

Music and movies

The band of choice this weekend has been lots of Tangerine Dream, specifically the movie soundtracks of Sorcerer (1977) and Three O’Clock High (1987). The moody synths make for great late-night reading music.

In a perhaps-questionable parenting choice, we watched Godzilla (2014) as a family last night. Finn has been obsessing some over Godzilla, and decided to put Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974) on for him. Ezra joined in and not being able to read the subtitles, we switched over to Godzilla. Kids loved it and no nightmares (yet).

After the kids have gone down to bed, we’ve been on bit of a movie binge. The highlights for me was watching Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (which I loved) for the first time, and rewatched Shaun of the Dead for probably the 10th time.

Reading

I’m in between books at the moment so I’ve been taking time to cleaning up my to-do lists which meant dipping in and out of the Getting Things Done book. I’ve moved all lists, mail, calendars and notes over to the Apple ecosystem and I’m finding Reminders very good so far.

The kids are heading to the playground so with that, I’m signing off. I haven’t written a post here in a long time, but wanted to try a quick stream-of-consciousness, unedited braindump for once.

A Sunday Story: 2011-12-11

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:00:00 +0000

This past week left me emotionally drained, with the excitement of signing on for my new job and putting my notice in at Flickr. I’ve started to say a few farewells at the office and each one leaves me in a slightly altered state. On top of that, I’ve been fighting the office flu. So this weekend was mostly a collapse. On Saturday, Meghan and I biked out to Outerlands with Phil Dokas and Traci and had a nice brunch and then went on towards the beach. Traci’s bike got a flat at some point, at which we parted ways. On Sunday, I got out my sketchbook and started to working through a few exercises in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be working on something where my efforts would come to naught, so I poked at my yearbook a bit, formatting a few of the pages. At night, we joined Trevor and Camille at Nopalito where we enjoyed hearing about their Disneyland trip and discussing Meghan’s book club. I’ve already started mentally preparing for next week. It’s an odd feeling when you know your days at work are numbered and you start tallying through the things that you’re going to make your best effort to accomplish. The next week is going to fly by and I need to hunker down and crank.

A Sunday Story: 2011-11-20

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

This week was another busy week, with the Wine Country trip on Monday and Tuesday with a mad rush back to San Francisco Wednesday morning, and then countless meetings the rest of the week. I’ve written quite a bit about the trip but I’m not really pleased with the tone of it, so I may just rewrite it straight.

I didn’t shoot many pictures this week, but this was my favorite out of the ones I did.

Saturday had big initial plans, but they devolved into just us just laying around, as Meghan has been pulling crazy hours dealing with baking and a day of rest was needed. I spent most of Saturday night figuring out how to make my Linux laptop not suspend when I closed the lid. This was about all the fiddling with technology I could stomach this weekend.

Today was nice, though. I met up with Neil and we went to Molotov in the Lower Haight and half-watched the Niners game, went across the street to Rosemunde’s to grab a sausage and then a final beer at Toronado. Later that night, Meghan and I met up with Dunstan, Trevor, and Camille at Hobson’s Choice for a drink, and then ate at Burger Urge (yep, that’s the real name…).

I read a few of David Foster Wallace’s short stories and essays this week, which partly knocked me off finishing the Wine Country post. Though I’ll never be able to write like him, I do take some solace in that no one else will be able to either. I did pick up Frank Conroy’s memoir “Stop-Time” as David Foster Wallace mentioned in one of those stories that it was one of the books that made him want to become a writer – I’m really enjoying it so far.

A Sunday Story: 2011-11-13

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Our friend Sara visited us from Chicago for a few days and it was really nice to catch up and show a new visitor around the city for a bit. Meghan took Thursday off so they were able to wander the city and get some shopping in. On Saturday, before she flew off, we made our normal bike route through Golden Gate Park, showing her the ocean and the bison.

This was a nice reprieve from the numerous, intense meetings I had work this week.

UNC played its first basketball game of the season from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, bobbing around in the ocean outside of San Diego. To partake in this event, I and a few other UNC alumni met at Jillian’s in SOMA. The good guys won and I rode my bike back in the rain.

After having dinner at with Meghan’s folks last night at Thai Idea, we went to Richard and Katherine’s engagement party at the SimpleGeo offices, where I got to catch up with a quite a few good folks, drink some whiskey, and eat some s’mores.

This morning we went on a bike ride with Meghan’s parents, out to the ocean and back, and said hello to the bison again.

After the bike ride, I cycled back out and went down to Dolores Park to meet up with Eric and Bogan, where I carefully wrapped three bottles of Stone Pale Ale in aluminum foil to keep them cool. It was good hanging out with those guys, enjoying the crowd and the last bit of warmth from the day.

Tomorrow, I’m heading up to wine country for a couple of days, culminating in dinner at The French Laundry, which I’m giddily excited about.

After shooting tons of Instagram photos over the past few weeks, I decided to drag my Minolta 35mm out that I haven’t shot with in forever. I also shot a few this weekend with my little Ricoh point-and-shoot.

Things I’ve been thinking about:

Flickr
Christmas in New York City
Aaron and his parallel-flickr
Building a thing that spits out a random post from the archives of a few choice blogs
Hand-written letters
How much beer I’ve drank recently

A Sunday Story: 2011-11-06

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:00:00 +0000

I’m glad this week is over. Onwards and upwards.

A Sunday Story

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:30:00 +0000

This morning, we decided to bike to brunch somewhere. After a relaxing ride through Golden Gate Park—where the streets are closed as usual on Sundays—we first stopped by Outerlands but, as usual, the line was around the block. We wanted to eat a bit earlier than the wait would have allowed so we moved on to the Beach Chalet. After a slow breakfast with good conversation, we took a walk along Ocean Beach, where the fog had started to move in. Surfers in their wetsuits were out with their boards in front of an under-construction building on the beach, which I imagine will be hosting the RipCurl Pro Search contest next week. On the ride back through the park, we stopped at the food trucks to visit a couple of Meghan’s friends who run the Twirl and Dip ice cream truck. Meghan had a popsicle, and as I was still full from breakfast, I simply accepted a plastic spider ring. The rest of the afternoon was spent writing and half-heartedly watching NFL on TV, with Meghan fixing a pie for Bogan, ordering Chinese takeout, and mentally preparing for the upcoming week.