Project Insomnia

I'm including belt loops along with pockets.

My phone
See above

Leatherman
I carry it with me everywhere (except through TSA). I can't count the number of times it's been invaluable; suffice to say I reach for it at least a few times every day.

Wallet
Kind of obvious.

Napa Rose Lounge is in the Napa Rose restaurant, inside the Grand Californian Hotel at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. Napa Rose is the Resort's high-end dining establishment. It's lately become a sort of tradition to end the day here, or at least begin the end of the day--the Lounge does close around 10 pm, so we'll often move to the nearby Hearthstone.

Supremely relaxing and comfortable, excellent service, great drinks and appetizers.

Yesterday we drove home from Lake Tahoe, and, with inspiration I can describe as well-intentioned but mistaken in retrospect, decided to take US-50 instead of I-80 (on which we'd driven to Tahoe). Here's the route:

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The whole point of the last-minute Tahoe trip was to get some snow, which we missed completely on the New Year's road trip. So, says I, checking the Caltrans road conditions site, US-50 seems to be clear with no restrictions and it's the scenic route. Let's try that.

We got as far as South Lake Tahoe and then, wow, sudden stop. I rechecked Caltrans and saw that chains were now required for a portion of highway 50 through Eldorado National Forest. Since we were in Jennifer's Subaru Forester, with full-time all-wheel drive, we didn't actually need to install the chains but had purchased some just in case some well-meaning CHP officer insisted we have them.

I really didn't know what was holding up traffic, but later I determined that we covered the next 25 miles in a little under five hours. It wasn't accidents, though there were a few. It wasn't severe weather, as that didn't start until we were well up in the mountains. It wasn't chain-on areas—those were pretty well organized off to the side and not really blocking the road. I think it was mostly just volume of traffic combined with less than competent drivers. Think of how badly the average person drives in the rain, and then double or triple that for snow and ice conditions.

Anyway, Jennifer was driving so I was fiddling with my phone—Tweeting, checking road conditions, getting news, the usual. For some very odd reason, although I had good coverage through most of the drive, my Tweets didn't arrive until many hours later and, of course, were all out of order. I've reassembled the correct timeline here:

• Checked out & heading home via I-50.
  
• Correction: US-50, not I-50. I'm so embarrassed.
  
• No rain here (outside S. Lake Tahoe on US-50) just snow. Lots and lots of snow.
  
• It's snowing sideways.
  
• Making average 4mph. Whee.
  
• Live video: http://qik.com/smartwatermelon (archived video clips here)
  
• There is something ever so slightly surreal about a Mexican cantina in an alpine-style building in a snowstorm. (it was El Papagayo Grill & Cafe, and we stopped for a quick snack and restroom break)
  
• Close to white-out.
  
• Cars & trucks skidding out as we descend.
  
• We've gone from snow to rain.
  
• Annnnd now back to snow.
  
• Torrential rain in Placerville.
  
• I think my Tweets are not going through.
  
• I suspect a whole load on on-the-road blathering will show up sooner or later.
  
• HOME.
  

The trip home took around eight hours, and for comparison it was fewer than four to get there on I-80. But hey, snow!

Labels: forester, highway 50, hyatt regency, lake tahoe, snow, subaru, twitter

I remember reading something about it taking 21 days for an activity to become a habit. I'm working on that.

I do 30 minutes of Wii Fit yoga almost every day, as a warm-up for a treadmill session. Weeknights, I'll do 90 minutes on the treadmill while watching Countdown and Rachel Maddow (without commercials, each show is around 45 minutes). I'll usually do a shorter session on weekends. The treadmill is usually set at 5% incline and 3.5 to 4 MPH, though I vary the speed now and then.

"2600, The Hacker Quarterly"
2600 is a magazine by, for and about hackers and hacking. If you immediately think that means the jerks who put spyware on your computer and stole your credit card number, you've confused "hackers" with "criminals". Think Matthew Broderick's character in WarGames.

"MAKE"
MAKE is about building things and being creative with technology. So far I haven't actually built any of the projects but I enjoy reading it.

"Scientific American"
I read SciAm to stay on top of news in the science and technology fields that's sometimes ignored or not covered by major media outlets. I tend to skip over the soft science (biology, genetics) but enjoy the physics, environmental, astronomy and the regular columns and reviews.

So there I was, typing happily on my Apple Wireless Keyboard and listening to iTunes through my Plantronics 260 headset when, suddenly, the Bluetooth icon in the system menu bar disappeared and was replaced by an error icon. Clicking that icon gave a message, "Bluetooth: not available".

After a bit of Googling I found that this was an uncommon but reported problem, where apparently the System Management Controller forgets it has a Bluetooth module installed if the CPU temperature rises too high. Odd, and points to a couple of design issues, but fairly easily fixed.

1. Delete Bluetooth preferences (may not be necessary but recommended in a few places)
   
2. Reset the SMC
   
3. Install smcFanControl
   

After resetting the SMC (which involves powering off), Bluetooth came back on like it was never gone.

Hopefully this will help someone else with the same problem!

Labels: bluetooth, macbook pro, smc, system management controller

My phone (HTC Mogul) is not just a phone, it's my mobile information/connection hub. Which sounds all hackneyed and Web-2-point-oh but it's true. Without the phone I have no addresses, no phone numbers, no text messaging or Twittering, no Google, no maps, no weather... it's awful. I complain a lot about the miserable experience of Windows Mobile but the truth is it's the best available option for me right now. I'd love an iPhone--if Apple would release one that works on the Sprint network (CDMA/PCS) with a slide-out hard keyboard. I'd love a Nokia N97--same caveat. Neither are likely in the near future.



In conclusion, a day without my phone sucks.

It's the first thing that came to mind, honestly. Although I have a huge collection of movies I actually don't tend to watch them very often. I haven't seen "Blade Runner" in quite a number of years.

Also, being sick really sucks. The last time I felt this awful was three years ago, and it took two weeks to get over it.

Buried in AP article about DirecTV's quarterly results is this nugget of information:

[CEO Chase] Carey said DirecTV will roll out a 'whole-home' digital video recording service starting in the second quarter that will enable customers to record programs on a DVR in one room and watch them in other areas of the house on TVs hooked up to linked non-DVR set-top boxes.

Well, it's about time. TiVo (not DirecTiVo, just regular old TiVo) had this ages ago. Finally I'll be able to record on the upstairs DVR and watch it downstairs or vice-versa. This should help with scheduling conflicts--I hope there is some sort of auto-conflict manager included with the new service.

Eric Watson, Eric Rita, Eric Linus. For a while last year we had Eric Milo, too.

My first Internet connection was via 2400bps modem to Netcom, on a beige-box 386 probably running Windows 3.11. This would have been in the early to mid 90s, probably 1994. I had an @ix.netcom.com address, used NetCruiser on the nascent Web and poked around in newsgroups.

Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?

I've had it as long as I can remember. It's varied from minor heebie-jeebies to complete freak-out and the level of response mostly depends on how surprised I am by the creepy-crawly. If I am not startled by the spider (or whatever) then I can generally hold the panic at bay long enough to deal with it.

I think the "only cruise ships" rule has to do with the sense of complete removal from everyday life; karaoke is something so totally outside my "normal" personality that it only works when I can't leave the bar and go home after I'm done.

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FatWood. A four-pound burlap bag of FatWood. Given to me by my mother-in-law's now ex-boyfriend. We didn't have a very high opinion of each other and this was pretty representative.

It made my brains liquify and start coming out my ears. I've tried to read it three or four times (over the course of twenty years) and never made past halfway. Last time was maybe eight years ago so it might be time to try again.