I’m really excited- I just found a source for a wide variety of cheap and fresh produce. It’s only a 3 minute bike ride from home, and the prices are even better than Berkeley Bowl. I got a bunch of kale for $1, a large bundle of green onions for 49 cents, a bundle of fresh oregano for $1.50, and cherries for about $2.50/lb. Almost all of the fruit and vegetables were a steal, and they even had small cartons of lactose free milk. I can definitely see myself dropping in there twice a week to keep us stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies for cheap.
They don’t have a lot other than produce, wine, and cheese- no fish or meat to speak of, and very few household things. I’ll probably still go to Albertson’s for commercial boxed food, but this seems like the local place to beat for produce. I’m really surprised that a place like this exists, honestly. Here’s a link to it on Yelp:
Giovanni’s Produce and Grocery
I got a new bike today, and I think I’m going to be really happy with it. It feels really good to ride, and I feel like I’ll really be able to eat up the miles with it compared to walking everywhere. I think that maybe it just made the bay area a little better for me. Here’s a picture from it’s website:
You can click on the picture to go to the website describing the bike. It’s a Marin Kentfield, and I got a rack for above the back tire as well as a helmet and lock. I’m not a bike guy (yet), but it was neat bringing it home on Bart. Someone actually said to me, “Hey, nice bike!”
I think one thing that really stood out to me about it was that it has fairly thin tubes compared to a lot of aluminum bikes I’ve seen. It’s fairly light, and I think I’ll be OK carrying it up and down the stairs every day. I go to drop off some paperwork for work on Tuesday-ish, so I should get to give it a shot then.
Yesterday I accepted a job offer at Siemens for a six month contract doing mechanical design in the Concord facility. I go to fill out the paperwork tomorrow afternoon. They tell me that there’s a strong chance that this kind of thing can go permanent, so I’m glad to hear that. The pay is good, although health insurance isn’t included so I will have to pay for that.
Bad news- I heard back from the solar place, and they said that they just can’t get me a decision in the next week or so, and that they’re still interviewing. I won’t be able to pick between them and the offer I already have, because I’m definitely not passing by such an attractive offer and position for a weak “maybe”.
Very good news- I got a call back from the diabetes place, and it sure sounds like HR-speak for “Lets give you the job”. I’m filling out an application tonight, and it sounds like I could have something final tomorrow.
I’m still waiting to hear back from the product design place, but they seem very professional for their size and I believe that they’ll be talking to me tomorrow morning. Again, this should all be wrapped up by 6:00 PM tomorrow. I might have to throw a tiny party this weekend to celebrate!
By the way- I’m intentionally trying to stay vague about company names. I don’t know who all reads this blog, and I don’t want to do anything unprofessional. I normally try not to write too much about the details of work for just that reason, but I think that this is exciting enough to make an exception.
Today I got a call that I have a job offer in Concord; it’ll be a contract position and will last for 6 months. I’ll talk more about it a bit later- but I just wanted to share the good news. It’s a really solid job, it’s interesting, and it pays better than my last one.
The thing that’s holding me back is that this past week I had three other interviews that went really well, and the jobs I interviewed for would really make me stop and think which one to take. I called all of the hiring managers this morning and let them know that I need to give a reply on my offer by the end of day tomorrow, and all three agreed to give me a call back within 24 hours. I guess that’s good that all of these companies are seriously considering hiring me for something I’d love to do- and none of them could just dismiss me without taking time to talk and get back to me.
I’m in demand, and I’m about to make a big comeback from unemployment. It is going to feel really good to get back to work, and hopefully I’ll be able to do some fun things in and out of work.
I’ve been a little bit of cleaning/organizing lately for all of the people coming out to CA for Kendra’s graduation, (Congatulations, Kendra! You did it!) and last night I had a crazy dream that I thought was worth blogging about.
I was cleaning, and I found my juggling balls. As I picked them all up and put them on the pile of things I was going to “Organize”, I found that where I has just looked contained more juggling balls. I picked those up, and when I went to put them on the pile I noticed that the first three were missing. Regardless, at that point I saw that there were three more where I had just removed the three from that were in my hands. I put down that second group of three and picked up the third group. Wouldn’t you know it? When I tried to put this group of three on the pile, the second group was gone and a fourth group had appeared where I was trying to remove all of the juggling balls.
If dreams are metaphors, I’m not sure WHAT the heck this one means.
In other news, I was walking down the road in Berkeley, and I saw this thing that made me say “Only in Berkeley!”. Somebody had locked up a unicycle outside of a shop. Who the heck rides around a unicycle, and how are you supposed to lock it to anything? Anyway, here’s a picture:
I always feel like a moron posting about new products that I see- I’m not running a press release here, folks. If you really truly care, you’ll find out about these products on your own- but I found this to be especially noteworthy because they’re released the next camera in the series that mine belongs to.
It looks almost identical to my camera, but it has a few key improvements that I can say would be welcome. Beyond just the physical size of my camera, there’s another reason why it’s not the best for shooting around for candid snapshots. It doesn’t have the very latest image processor with face detection, advanced correction features, and other goodies- this new camera has that.
The newest point-and-shoot cameras have really benefited from this addition of intelligence. Even if their optics and sensors aren’t extremely high quality, their ability to intelligently adjust focus and exposure to make sure that faces are in focus and properly visible makes them far more useful for casual shooting.
I treat my own camera as more of a fun tool than a casual point and shoot. I enjoy playing with exposure and shutter, and trying to get interesting shots. I’ve often thought of getting a cheap little compact camera for shooting group shots when friends are hanging out. This camera would be a little closer to that, but would still be bulky.
Another neat thing is that it has a flash hot-shoe. This lets the camera come even closer to competing with the digital SLRs. As I’ve learned, though, a decent digital SLR gives you a few benefits that go beyond what is possible in a camera this size and smaller. The longer lens body on an SLR (I think) gives you more control over depth-of-field while focusing. The digital SLR is also able to use a physically larger sensor, which allows it to capture more light with less noise.
Anyway, I’m fairly happy with my Powershot. It was cheap, and has a reasonably good balance of the features I want.
Today I very nearly met my personal goal of three miles in thirty minutes on the treadmill. It might not sound very ambitious in a world of four minute miles, but it’s a big deal for me. I’ve never been that great at running, but one time during my senior year of highschool I did a mile in 7:00. I use to run several miles without stopping, and I’m sure I was getting better than a ten minute pace back then.
So, today I did 2.5 miles in 24:24, meaning that I kept up a 9:46 pace. I think I probably overdid it trying to make my second mile faster than my first, because I just totally ran out of steam early in the third. I had to stop- and also the treadmill started smelling like smoke. I think they need to do some maintenance work on it. Now that I’m typing this I remember that I really need to contact the leasing office and let them know that something’s not right with that thing.
In other news, I finally found a halfway decent calendar plugin for Thunderbird, my email program. As far as email programs go, Thunderbird is great. It’s very capable, has good searching sorting and filtering, but it’s definitely not Outlook. I’ve always considered that to be a good thing, but as I keep adding all of these “to do” reminders for myself and scheduling interviews and meetings at all times and places, it’s been a real help.
How did that nursery rhyme go? I don’t remember.
I probably looked like a crazy dork today, going up and down the BART escalator with a camera pointed at nothing at all, but I got an interesting, slightly arty photo out of it. Here it is:
stairway.jpg
I had the idea that escalators might make interesting shots for long exposures when I was waiting for a train a few days ago. I took this shot, and had no problem getting 5 or more seconds of shutter without overexposing the heck out of it. That’s with ISO 80 and the smallest aperture. It just so happens that BART stations are mostly dimly lit, and are one of the better places for this sort of shot during daylight hours.
The next idea that comes to mind involves getting someone to walk down the up escalator with their head held still in the frame. Their body ought to look like a freaky cloud if they can just hold their head still enough, since the stairs will keep their feet in constant motion. It might be too tough to pull off, you might need to be a professional dancer to have that kind of control over your body. Perhaps someday I’ll come across some similar shots that are a little easier to capture. In the meanwhile, this is fun.
