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Today I got to save a life. Sort of.

For the past few weeks I’ve been volunteering at the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, taking computers destined for a scrap heap, separating the metaphorical wheat from the chaff and reassembling the  parts into working computers.

You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things that people donate. There are some really high-end computers that come through there. SGI clusters, servers, Cisco fiber switches, and power macs galore. Then again, there’s the fair share of really old computers to get put out to pasture, too, but they are what makes it so much fun for me. Taking apart the old computers is like a walk down the road of computer history. All the weirdest almost-made-it kinds of ideas and components come through the ACCRC, and most get tossed in the recycling bin.

The better computers, and the ones we can build out of salvaged parts, later get Ubuntu linux installed on them and are then donated to charities, schools, or people not able to afford their own computer.

So, today as I’m installing Ubuntu on a resurrected Pentium 3, James, the guy who runs the place (and who begrudgingly landed at the top of CNN’s Heroes list two weeks back), comes in to the room where I was working saying that he needed to get an Apple Lisa working so it could be sold at a charity auction.

A little Lisa History
The Lisa was the brainchild of Steve Jobs and was the first computer to come with a graphical user interface and, more importantly, the first to come with a mouse. They retailed for ten large and truly set the course for what we know today as a modern computer. Before this day, I’d never seen a Lisa, only heard the name whispered like a story about magic or a first love.

James dragged one down from the attic of the ACCRC warehouse, and after finding out that neither it nor any of the 5 others he got down actually worked. We started tearing them apart, and after 2 hours and a whole lot of circuit board swaps later, we had one that booted. 5 MB hard drive and all (yeah, 5 megabytes). Hey, for 1982, 5 MB was pretty cutting edge.

I had fun playing the role of both computer archaeologist and doctor. Even though Lisa is 25 years old, I feel like reaching inside her was reaching into the past, touching the naïve, beautiful dreams of her creators.

As an aside, the Altair—that other computer with the first GUI— can siooma, as Steve Jobs would say.

Every now and again, my girlfriend reconnects with her Cantonese roots by buying a bunch of magazines from Hong Kong. Last May, she picked up this little gem, Go Shopping!, which is jam packed with stuff to buy. Mainly for women. Lotsa clothes, cosmetics, weight-loss snake oil, and a few things about food.

It’s not a real magazine, more like a paper version of those Service Merchandise smorgasbords that used to follow each round of Wheel of Fortune. Or maybe Price is Right makes a better metaphor, but you get the picture.

Picking through it, I found some gift ideas like this personal sauna suit. Why didn’t anyone think of that sooner? Probably be a hit at Gitmo.

But the best part is the 4-page spread on the invasion of Hong Kong by upscale burger chains.

Everything but the names of the burgers is in Chinese, but the names are all you need.

First up is Frying Nemo, the fish burger. Looks pretty good. Kinda McFishwish-y, but nice and crispy.

Next is the veggie burger, or as it’s so delicately named: The Sissy Boy. Maybe it’s a statement about vegetarians. I dunno.

Oh, and what goes better together than hamburgers and Mexican food? Well, if you’re a normal human, everything. If you’re a Hong Kong restaurateur, nothing. That logic brings us the South of the Border which is laid on a bed of salsa-like stuff and topped with some avacado and a dallop of sour cream. Yum.

Not.

But look again at the left hand page of the article and there’s that big ass burger that the model is gripping. Two thick patties, lettuce, cheese… It’s huge! Almost the size of her head.

But what’s it called. The fat burger? The heart clogger? What kind of mildly amusing or culturally offensive name could really fit it? The Texas lard butt? The American diet burger?  Nah, it’s something much more subtle. Much more profound.

Look close.

[better late than never]

A few weeks back, Bob convinced me that it would be a great idea to go see a drift “race” up at Sears Point raceway in Sonoma. What exactly is going to go on at a drift race, I kept asking myself before we went. Maybe just a bunch of guys racing really slowly around the track—’cause screeching your tires around a turn, all drift style, definitely isn’t the fastest way to travel.

So, we headed up there. Me and Stephanie, Bob and his girlfriend (who’d recently been staging her way around Tokyo), and John.

The first thing that we figured out about the day was that there weren’t really that many people at the drift race, and more importantly that it meant that we could’ve brought beer directly into the event instead of paying ballpark prices for it. Next time.

The second thing I learned is that drifting isn’t run like a race where the fastest driver wins, it’s more like figure skating, where the fanciest and most technically correct moves get the most points.

The first even was qualifying, where cars hurtled solo down a hill, through a right hand 270° turn, and then back left through 180°. That’s it. That and a lot of tire-smoke.

Drivers get docked points for going off the track, spinning out, keeping a bad line, and not pleasing the crowd.

After qualifying, we shuffled down to where all the teams had camped out to show off their cars and give out massive amounts of swag. Plenty of scantily-clad, I-hate-my-dad floozies were prowling around for fat guy photo ops, too. We skipped the photos, Stephanie snagged a Blanco Basura Trucking Company shirt (means White Trash in Spanish, check the left picture below), and we all got hooked up with driver Ken Gushi’s face on a stick. Some teams were even handing out used tires. We passed on those.

On to the main event. The drivers that qualified line up in front of the judges pavilion, soak up some applause, and then proceed to do their meanest donuts on the way back up the starting gate. Somehow, I learned, it’s actually possible to do a donut while hanging out the window of a car, waving to fans. Bub, you must have some long legs and a cool hand.

The main event was run round-robin elimination style, but instead of going solo, the cars now went in pairs in double runs where each car got a chance to lead in one of the runs. This was way cooler than the qualifying, and got huge rises out of the crowd (me included) because they were usually going somewhere between 50 and 90 mph and in a state of near-collision while massive clouds of smoke were blasting out of their tires.

In the end, Chris Forsberg and his 350Z roadster won the race, with Vaughn “the hairy American winning machine” Gittin Jr taking second in his teal ‘Stang, and Ken Gushi (represent!) coming in third in his blue Mustang. Full results here.

Check out this video for a different look at the event.

[edit: I un-embedded the video because it was breaking my site, and I’m too lazy to figure out why]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylH_Xe7KKo8 
fin.

Sometimes one shot will do me
sometimes it takes four or five
Sometimes I shoot all around
before I’m satisfied

When you hear my pistol poppin’
you better hide someplace
Cause I ain’t made for stoppin’
and I come from a shootin’ race

Lyrics like these could easily show up in a rap song today, but these are from the 1930 song Pistol Packin’ Papa by Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country music. A little bit later in the song, he even refers to his gun as his gat. Way ahead of your time, Jimmie. Way ahead.

I used to be the kind of person who’d happily listen to the grittiest gangster rap but turn up my nose at country. But the more I hear, the more similarities there are. At least with older country, and maybe newer honky tonk. Now, I can happily admit that I listen to country. And I like it, a hell of a lot. I couldn’t tell you what’s popular on the radio (though a few years ago I could).

Maybe I can chalk some of it up to living in California, and particularly in Alameda county, home to rodeos and sideshows. A few years back I went to the county fair out in Pleasanton, where you get an odd mix of 4H clubs, livestock shows, Mexican food, Berkeley hippies, and thug-life types probably from Oakland. A huge cross-cut of American life.

Anyways, here’ the song, Pistol Packin’ Papa in all its gun-blazing glory. Don’t expect it to sound too much like Clipse, though. Rodgers yodels between bars.

click the arrow to give a listen. download it here.

About 3 years ago, I fell in love with Deadwood, a swear-laden, whiskey-soaked western on HBO whose life was cut short by creator David Milch’s new project: a surf noir titled John from Cincinnati.

What does the title mean? Who is John from Cincinnati? What is a surf noir? Even after 8 episodes, I have absolutely no idea. John is a cartoon-haired numbskull of a character that annoyingly parrots dialog back at the other characters. Maybe he’s an alien, maybe the return of the messiah, but Milch isn’t giving anyone an inch.

Beyond John, few of the other characters have believable motives or are particularly engaging. The story drags, kicks, and occasionally looks to pick up, but after so many swells, there haven’t been any good waves. Oh, there’s almost no surfing in John, either.

The show is jam packed with retreaded HBO actors like Jim Beaver, Paula Malcomson, Dayton Callie, and Garrett Dillahunt (all from Deadwood), along with Willie Garson (Carrie’s buddy Stanford from Sex in the City), and Paul Ben Victor (the Greek’s emissary in The Wire). Throw them in with Ed O’Neill’s nutty-Al-Bundy character who talks to birds and spits the phrase “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!” every 5 minutes, and Dylan from 90210 as a pseudo-evil surf-company antagonist, and it should be good. Lot’s of talent, right?

I don’t understand a second of it, and my guess is that Milch is attempting some sort of career suicide. You’ve heard of “suicide by police,” where someone commits a heinous crime with the intent that it will end in a standoff with the cops, a shootout, and finally death? Maybe Milch just wants to be released from HBO’s shackles. He can’t just walk away into obscurity Terrence Mallick style, so he gets himself fired.

Whatever. The most inexplainable thing about this show, the part that I really don’t understand, is why I watch every single one of them. I hate the show, but I’ve seen every episode.

Tonight’s episode promises to reveal all the secrets, or at least that’s what the ads say. Maybe that’s what I’m watching it for—the resolution. An opportunity to hear the explanation, to hear the justification, and say to myself, “that really was stupid.”

The one shining light in the show is the intro song, a highlight of very few HBO shows. John’s intro, a filmsy, sunny montage of surfers, is set to a Joe Strummer song called Johnny Appleseed. Click the arrow to give it a listen.

Joe, you’re sorely missed. John, I’m afraid I’ll never say the same about you.

Yeah, I read BoingBoing. I like a lot of what they write about, but some of it kind of bugs me.

knitting - ok, but only in moderation. I need to see another knitted Katamari like I need a hole in the head.

steampunk - soldering water pipes to a computer is lame.

Nancy - it ain’t a funny strip, it’s not transcendental, it’s just a boring comic where nothing happens and no jokes are funny.

But I think I’m starting to warm to Nancy. Maybe it’s the context. I haven’t had a job in a few months (and by a few I mean 7) and I’m appreciating the slow pace of my life. Cooking, being a handyman, reading. It’s fun, and this Nancy strip I found on BoingBoing speaks to me.

Right on.

Tonight, after getting home from my cousin Brian’s birthday party in the city, I parked my car right in front of my house.

A few hours later, I heard a big bang, just like someone kicked over a garbage can. I went out to check it out and here’s what I found:

The tree outside my house “donated” one of its branches to my car’s windshield. The branch was a bit too big.

Click for a close up:

Fortunately for me, the city technically owns the tree, so I called up Berkeley’s finest. They came out, took a report, and even called CSI to take a few pictures. Tomorrow, I get to call the city attorney and see what kind of recompense I can get out of them. A new windshield and wiper would be nice. Anything else will just be gravy.

Last May marked 13 years that I’ve owned the Jetta. It sure takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. But that’s because the valve lifters all need to be replaced.

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. I got a story into Wired magazine!

It’s not the biggest story, but it’s my first paid story and also my first story in a national magazine. If everything goes according to plan, you should be able to read it in the next issue (Sept. ‘07).

In a nutshell, the story is about this amazing pair of silicon balls being made in Australia. They’re being precision-ground to be one kilo exactly so that they can replace the current definition of a kilogram, which is actually a little lump of metal sitting in a vault outside Paris.

Go up and ask someone on the street “what is a kilogram?”The answers might go something like this:

Two pounds

The weight of a liter of water

Who cares

But if you ask my man Ghostface, this would be his answer.

“I want to go for a drive …. something epic.” That’s how the day started out, with Bob telling me he wanted to get out of dodge. He wanted to go to Yosemite, but we started late enough that we’d only be able to tag the border of the park before turning around.

We settled on Locke, a strange little town in the Sacramento River Delta. One of the reporters at the Bee told me that lots of the Delta towns were quirky, and Locke was at the top of his list.

So we set off in the late morning sun, climbing the Altamont Pass and its aging wind farms, descended the other side into the central valley, and breathed deep the smell of farms, orchards, and heat.

We headed north on I5 a while, jagged off onto the cooler delta roads. Most of the roads were along rivers, dotted with marinas full of boats and punctuated with drawbridges. 10 minutes later we were there, and 10 seconds after that we passed it. Locke might be 60 buildings total on a handful of streets, all crammed together the way city houses are crammed together.

Things like this, you don’t see too often in rural California. To tell the truth, this building was in the town right next to Locke, but still. Not what you expect in rural CA. At all.

Locke has seen better days. Many of the buildings are peeling and listing to the side. It wasn’t always this way, though. Here’s a little history from the town’s website:

Locke was founded in 1915 after a fire broke out in the Chinese section of nearby Walnut Grove. The Chinese who lived in that area decided that it was time to establish a town of their own. A committee of Chinese merchants, led by Lee Bing, was formed. They approached land owner George Locke and inquired if they could build on his land. An agreement was reached. The town was laid out by Chinese architects and industrious building ensued. The founding of Lockeport, later ‘Locke’, was a reality. By 1920 Locke stood essentially as you see it now.

Levee construction originally brought the Chinese to this area, but by the time Locke was built most of the work was in farm labor. Locke had many businesses that catered to the farm workers and residents of this region. In the 1940’s restaurants, bakeries, herb shops, fish markets, gambling halls, boarding houses, brothels, grocery stores, a school, clothing stores, and the Star Theatre lined the bustling streets of Locke. At its peak 600 residents, and as many as 1500 people occupied the town of Locke.

1500 people, huh? Must have been a fun time.

The town’s history is on display in the Dai Loy (literally, big arrive) Museum—a converted and heavily fortified old gambling hall. It’s pretty cool. Admission is $1.25, paid into a small bin near the entrance. No one works in this place so the only explanations of the domino games, lottery tickets (all in Chinese, of course) and variety of shanks and opium pipes comes from yellowing paper legends tacked along the tables and walls.

The stories along the walls also chronicle the evolution of the gambling hall. Chinese people love gambling. I’d feel like more of a shit saying things like that if Macau didn’t just surpass Las Vegas in gambling receipts. Macau, remember, is where Stephanie grew up and now she worries that the new wealth of mainland China will be spent ruining her sleepy Sino-Portugese home.

Back to Locke. The Dai Loy gambling hall used to get raided by sheriffs pretty regularly, so a lookout was posted and a special buzzer installed to guard against Johnny Law. After a team of sheriffs, “disguised as negroes”, raided the place, the Dai Loy’s doors were reinforced with steel. WTF???

And they barred and sealed the windows in the Dai Loy’s stunted steeple after another sheriff busted the place after descending from the ceiling on a rope and “disguised as a hindu.”

Okay, I can understand the busting the place Mission Impossible style, but if you’re already sneaking in through the ceiling, why get disguised as a hero? (Stephanie says that it’s probably because they still needed to sneak up to the Dai Loy before breaking in. She’s probably right)

We also stopped at the town bar, Al the Wop’s. Yeah, that kind of Wop. We walked in, made our way past the bikers at the bar and planted ourselves long enough to drink a Bud and watch some hub-bub about the Beckham-LA club about to play Chelsea. What a mix.

After that, and a few poses of Bob by his car, we were off. This time, I was driving. We headed back over the mountains through some extremely twisty, single lane roads and I tore it up. Mini Cooper S + Dinan = FUN AS HELL. I made a little Google Map of the best part of the drive here.

The last part of the drive took us through Lafayette, a boring, but tony town east of Oakland that’s most recently famous for a cross-monumented hill commemorating recently-fallen soldiers. It’s sadly full.

My boy Kyle has his own boy now. Behold, the wonder that is Walter Carver Kielinski.

He was born with more hair than I’ve ever seen on a baby. Now, I’m no baby expert, but that is a lot of hair. Carver’s also a pro at making some funny faces. Combine that with Kyle’s proclivity for original hair styling and you get the photo above.

Congratulations, Linette and Kyle. Your son’s a cutie.

Linette’s keeping a blog of this little long-hair’s antics. Go check it out, now!