I'm a lasagna boy!

In which I drink a tasty cup of coffee

At the lush Ferry Building Farmer's Market, I put back a macchiato when I picked up a half-pound (roasted the day before, thankyouverymuch) from Blue Bottle Coffee. The macchiato was superb. Hot dog, it was tasty. We ended up with a pound-and-a-half of coffee, in the form of three different beans, but land sakes! the macchiato went down smoothly. I think that from now on I will eschew the Frog Hollow stand indoors and head straight for the Blue Bottle cart. For you, here are some nice photographs of coffee.

In which I am power-less (Part IV)

The power still has not switched back to mains, and the generator on the corner is looking a little peaked. I wonder why PG&E have not actually informed any of the residents what is happening: being on the brink of (again) losing power contributes to my overall feeling, which is best summed up by "Who Here Will Fight Me?"
I'll take all comers. I have put back a vast quantity of dark-roast coffee in the past few hours.

In which I see pretty things

thanks to jimg, I keep checking out the antbike web site.

In which I am power-less (Part III)

The PG&E crew (down to four trucks, plus generator) have been pulling new plastic-sheathed mains cable under the street, to replace the clay-and-paper-wrapped cable from the 60s.

The Surly Guy in Truck says that they do not give advance notice of a power cutover in an emergency, since the maintenance is unscheduled. Could he drive a truck up and down the block to let us know? No.

In which I am power-less (Part II)

This morning we woke up at 430 to the hum of a generator at the corner of Page and Scott. A gizmo the size of a semi cab was installed at the corner, feeding the mains deep beneath the street. A generator had arrive earlier in the evening, but "blew up" and a replacement -- with capacity to supply two dozen families -- needed to be trucked up from San Carlos.

A note was on the windshield of a car parked on the west side of the street, politely asking the driver to alert the PG&E crew when they might be moving it: they needed access to the manhole beneath the street.

In which I am power-less (Part I)

PG&E has a really nice automated, voice-driven system for reporing electric (and gas) outages, available through 800 743 5002. They even offer wakeup calls, should the power outage last through the night (ours did).

They also have a Dashboard Widget. Then again, who does'n't?

We used candles, rotary-dial telephones (ah, power from the CO), and could'n't light the stove.

Significant power outages happen all too often in our neighbourhood. We have lost power thrice in the past two weeks, but on the previous occasions for less than half an hour each time. Tell-tale signs: the clock on the range is blinking furiously, but the UPS units have not yet begun wailing.

In which the burly trifecta is complete

This guy rode the steepest streets in San Francisco (39% grade! wow). It's a 6MB QuickTime movie, but the site does'n't render in Safari (what the hell?!). Burly, burly, burly!

In which we hear a public service announcement, with guitar

Know your rights, thanks to the Flex Your Rights web site. All of which has reminded me of Cody's experience with the man and the Mint, and a subsequent, similar scene at One Bush; and of the misbegotten MTA photo ban (and ditto in San Francisco); these incidents spurred me to carry a cheat-sheet of First Amendment rights as they pertain to photography. The ACLU had something similar and more wallet-sized, but I no longer find it on their site.
The path to protecting ephemeral rights is not through eroding existing privileges. To wit:

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.
and
Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Mr Thos. Paine, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Thomas Paine.
Other rights that are inconveniently disappeareing include the right not be be sniffed by a machine while waiting in line. Airline Security a Waste of Cash reads the title of the Bruce Scheier editorial on airline security in Wired. Never mind that we can again take fingernail clippers on commercial flights: "These programs are based on the dangerous myth that terrorists match a particular profile and that we can somehow pick terrorists out of a crowd if we only can identify everyone. That's simply not true." John Gilmore's hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court takes place this week: he is suing the US Government for prohibiting anonymous interstate travel.

In which I find the c in cake

Cheese, cava, and coffee. That's break-fast this morning, along with fried potatoes, eggs, and bacon. In yet another attempt to quantify the input and output of my quotidian activity, I am recording my daily walking distance. Who might have guessed that on a single day at work I cover three miles of cubicle farm?