Morning Adventures

Unexpectedly I woke up this morning at 6:30am. I went on a long walk because I had lots of time to burn before my carpool partner showed up. Luckily for me, after my walk I logged into work email and discovered that my carpool partner isn't carpooling today. So I jumped in my car and started driving to work. I made it to the I-580 to W I-80 merge and traffic was all messed up. And it didn't look like it was moving. (It's pretty normal for traffic to get all snarled through this area, but it's usually actually moving.) So, I exited and came home. Then I went down the block and had coffee, toast and jam.

I read an article in Wired about an interesting, if not eccentric, movie and commercial director. The only part of the article that stuck in my head was this line:

Wheezing on the chair beneath the windowsill is Jackpot, a French bulldog who receives a nightly knockout dose of Valium because he snores heavily yet insists on sleeping in the same bed with Morris and his wife, Julia.

This is such a bizarre thing, that it really overtook the rest of the content of the article for me.

So, I'm paying for my coffee and toast and the woman working the counter (who I've talked with before - she's really nice and a little spastic in a good way) asks me how the magazine is. So I tell her about this distracting line to this otherwise interesting article. And she decides to tell me a story.

Her extended family decides to go to Mexico together and then as the trip approaches everybody except her, a couple cousins her same age, and an Uncle drop out. She's in her early 30s, possibly late 20s.
This Uncle is the token annoying relative. He talks constantly and is in general no fun to be around. So she tells me that every night on vacation they made margaritas and put sleeping pills in her Uncle's drink. And every night he went to sleep at 8 or so. She said it ended up being a really good vacation.
I must have had a strange expression because she started explaining it more. About how it was fine, and I had to understand how annoying this Uncle was, etc.

Am I unusual to think that this whole thing is crazy? While she was telling me this story I kept thinking about how strongly I believe that under no circumstances is it every okay to give any drug or mind/body altering substances to anybody when they can't choose it.
There was definitely a point in my life when I dreamed of spiking my high school principal's coffee with LSD, but I never would have done it. It's one of those thoughts that don't go anywhere.

Life Expectancy For Americans Dropping

I should qualify the title and say it's for "some" Americans. Gee, I wonder why? (hint: look at the picture to the right.) Article is here.

I haven't been posting much because I've been so busy with work, and I haven't really run across much worth posting. The big project at work should be done by this Friday, or I'll be working this weekend too.

In other news, Yar is leaving for Japan in a little over a week! I'm so excited for him. (I wish I could go.) Have a great trip Yar, and I hope we'll get to see you this weekend.

Al Gore's new Climate Presentation

Our Hero, Al Gore, is at it again. Here's his updated presentation on climate change. It's depressing. Here's the direct link to the video - which will start playing as soon as the page loads.

And if you haven't heard of it yet, Ted's Talks are a pretty cool place to browse.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

A friend emailed me on Friday telling me to go see the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed which had just opened. It sounded interesting so I made a plan to go and see it during the "city day" that honeypot and I had planned and it worked out well because the only theater this movie was playing in the Bay Area was in SF.

We saw the movie and I fell asleep during part of it. That's not to say the content wasn't interesting, and it did actually bring up a couple really good points. Before I continue with the details of the movie, let me ask you a couple questions. First, do you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution? (I do.) Second, do you believe in intelligent design?

The main point of the movie is to show how highly respected scientists who firmly believe in evolution, but merely mention intelligent design are being ostracized by their scientific communities, as if they had stated their belief in creationism. Why is this so ridiculous, well let me explain:

Darwin's theory of evolution begins after the first cell exists on Earth. The theory of evolution is the process of change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. This is how a single cell organism evolved to be you!

The theory of evolution does not deal with how that first cell got there in the first place. Intelligent design is one theory to answer that question. Intelligent design is the idea that something specifically put that first cell on Earth. That could be some smarter (or dumber depending on how you look at the human race on earth currently) life form from another place who used Earth as a big petri dish to see what would happen, or that could be some higher power like God (I know, it's the scary G word), or some other source that doesn't involve randomness.

The prevailing Darwinian scientist's theory as to where that first cell came from are something along the lines of this: somehow some crystal formations caused the first cell to come into existence, or the mud puddle theory (right place, right substances, right conditions created that first cell.) Um, ..crystals, .. or .. um.. mud puddle .. hmmm... There aren't many good origination options here.

Do you see how being an evolutionist and an intelligent design supporter aren't exclusive to each other? You can be both, and I think I am actually both. I really like the alien idea and earth being a big petri dish and of course I believe we evolved from apes.

So the movie demonstrates that there's this ridiculous backlash against anybody that whispers the words intelligent design in a scientific setting. And it's pretty fierce, and not very scientific of people, to shut out this one theory, especially when the "prevailing" origination theories are pretty far fetched, in my opinion.

I'd like to take this moment to point out that creationism is the idea that God created us in our likeness right now. In the theory of creationism, humans didn't evolve from gorillas; this is exactly how God made us. This has no relationship to the movie or intelligent design, but I think many people get Intelligent Design and Creationism confused. They are not really related except that intelligent design and creationism might agree that God created that first cell. That's where the similarities end.

So, to all my scientist friends out there that might want to keep working in science - I would convince yourself that you believe in the crystal formation, or mud pie theory for the origination of that first cell, never mention intelligent design, and you'll be safely employed for the rest of your days. (Or you could buck the system - and come and stay with me in our guest room.)

The movie is worth watching. It's not as amazingly eye opening as some other movies designed to shed light on some issues, but it's well researched and demonstrates how unscientific the scientific community is about this one theory of where that first cell came from.

Thanks Steve! See you at your wedding (w/ my honeypot!)

Webby Awards - We've been nominated!

If you're reading this now - you probably care in some way about us and me.

My company has just been nominated for a Webby Award. They are something like the Oscars for websites, except that the person with the most votes wins. Those votes are users like you - so please, go and vote for Trulia in the Services category, under the subcategory of Real Estate.

Thanks to all of you who have already done this!

Here's the directions in my email I sent today (Sorry for spamming you - I've never done it before and I probably won't do it again.)

Greetings Friends and Family,
Trulia (My Company) has recently been nominated for a prestigious Webby award in the real estate category. For those unfamiliar with what those are - it's similar to an Oscar, except they're only for websites. It's an award for websites that are determined to be the "best of the internet."

The winner is determined by the number of people who vote.

Please help us win. Here's how:

All I need is 30 seconds of your time.

1. Please visit the link to Webby Awards website below to sign in and vote for Trulia: Look for the grey button on the right hand side that says: "Register now to vote" if you don't already have an account. If you do have an account - sign in.
http://pv.webbyawards.com/account/pv_login

2. Next - after you have logged in, click the link below and find the category 'Services', look for 'Real Estate' under that and vote for TRULIA!!
http://pv.webbyawards.com/ballot/home/1

2. Also please forward this email to 10 of your friends and ask them to do the same. Help my company win this Webby Award!

Here is some music to inspire you:
http://tinyurl.com/3w3sux

THANKS SO MUCH!

Best,
rainbow

omg - Esak Garcia

I used to go to bikram at this fantastic yoga studio when I lived in the Mission. Occasionally people on the bus home would ask me if I was okay because I would be so red for a while afterwards. I really liked that studio because everybody was so mellow and there was this strong essence of peace, tranquility and asomatous. When I moved to the East Bay I went to funky door a couple times and it was awful. I just remember how aggressive they were "push, push harder, 15 seconds more, push yourself." Where's the peace and spiritual connection in that? I call that "modern" yoga in the sense that in my world they're missing the essence of the whole thing.

How did this come up - well I ran across this amazing video. He is clearly one of the most flexible people around. It's worth the time to watch it through. It's around 7 minutes long.


On another topic: There sure is a lot of space trash out there. Click here for the combined images.

Google Video

A couple months ago the video team from Google came into our offices and did some filming regarding their maps API. That video is finally public, and it's funny. Probably more funny to me because I actually know everybody in it. Can you find me? I'm in there somewhere.

I left early today in honor of the sun! It's so nice out, I just couldn't continue to work. And they took the dev server down for a slight emergency. I had another good excuse today too because most of my office was specifically not supposed to be working. Instead they were supposed to be packing up their desks and getting ready to move. They're redoing the floor to fit in all those employees we've been hiring. They're getting new (very small) desks and tomorrow folks are coming in to redo the layout. I'm lucky because they're not touching the engineering rooms. So there are a lucky 13 of us not getting affected. I did wait around to go out for drinks, but the sun was calling.

Yesterday was nice because some friends called me up as they happen to be nearby drinking margaritas at a good taqueria. Of course I had to go join in and have one of my own. It put an interesting slant on the rest of my day. Perhaps I should drink more during work.