St. Joseph's Hill

St. Joseph's Hill Summit
Originally uploaded by /k.

I had to be in the South Bay (Santa Clara) yesterday afternoon, so I thought I would wait out the terrible rush hour traffic by revisiting some of my favorite Los Gatos biking trails.

I started out on the Los Gatos Creek Trail (map1,map2) in Vasona Park riding towards downtown Los Gatos and then climbed the hill towards Noviate and Saint Joseph's Hill (google map). Saint Joseph's Hill looms of Los Gatos and Lexington Reservoir County Park as a complete spirit crushing bike ride. It's only 3 1/2 miles long but covers about 800 - 1000 ft of vertical (PDF map). While the climb sucked (30 minutes of steep grade rocky trails), my bike really excelled on the downhill (7 sweet minutes).

Los Gatos Creek Trail
Originally uploaded by /k.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, but it was nice to fuel up on High Tech Burritos and see my old neighborhoods after the big climb.

You can see a few other photos from the ride over at my Flickr page.

Server Closet

Just after Brian left this morning, I figured that I need to clean out my den. A week of Brian squalor piled atop of a year of my uncleaniness might bring sanctions from the local health department. (The rest of this is technical/geeky and can be skipped)

I am on a big "silent computing" kick lately, so I've been investigating ways to move my Shuttle (small but loudish) out of my den -- leaving just my Sun Ray (no fan) and Mac Mini (external power supply so very quiet/small fan). I have a closet to move them into (I use the server as a Tarantella/Solaris server), but didn't have anyway to get network access to them (Solaris -- my Unix -- doesn't support many of the proprietary 802.11G cards avaialble).

However, Apple saved the day. I have a Apple Airport Express extending my wireless network to the porch and I found out that it also functioned as a Ethernet <-> Wireless bridge. Sweet. I moved my Shuttle server into the closet, plugged it into my Airport Express and I am now computing in blissful silence.

In-N-Out

It looks as if Folsom, CA is not going to get an In-N-Out Burger location like we thought.

This leaves me to driving up to Placerville for my double double protein-style fixes.

Sirius and Satellite

Sirius Boombox
Originally uploaded by /k.

While Kelly and Rachelle were out touring pig farms in Northern Iowa, they let me test out Rachelle's Sirius tuner and boombox. While my results were somewhat mixed, I can see how this will be quite popular with some people.

Sirius provides digital satellite radio service with technology very similar to DirecTV television service. They compete directly with another satellite radio service called XM. With an antenna pointing to the southern skies (I think), your proprietary tuner accesses 500 or so channels of digital sound. The sound quality is great, at least as good as my MP3 collection, maybe better. And like my iPod, the Sirius receiver announces song on its display as the song plays.

Just like on DirecTV's 500 channels, inevitably you gravitate to only a handful of choices. I spent my entire week listening to Alt Nation, which is a lot like the old MTV 120 Minutes (if they still broadcasted it ?) and Faction, which is kinda punk. This is of course different from First Wave, which appears to spin tunes from Kelly's iPod collection.

While the technology and music are cool, there are several drawbacks to the system. First and foremost, a view of the southern skies can sometimes be hard to come by. Like in my living room. Or my den. Or anywhere indoors. Secondly, someone else is still programming your music. Although the channels are much closer to the narrowcasting than broadcasting, you still get the repetition -- I heard Oasis' Layla four times in the past two days. Finally, I am not sure how many more $10/month services I want. Tivo, DirecTV, DSL, Mobilephone, etc start to add up after a while.

Overall, this is another entry into the increasingly crowded "music by subscription" market. This offering is slightly different, in that it includes live entertainment like sporting events, but fundamental similar to Rhapsody or Napster. Pay your money and get all you can listen to music for the month, cancel and you have nothing. I think I am still in the traditional "buy my music" / iTunes camp.

Backyard Is Done

Keith the contractor rolled in this morning with a trailer full of sod and had it all installed by 2:30 PM.

After a few days of watering, the dogs will finally be allowed back in the yard.

New Elements

Kelly and I saw my car's evil twin yesterday.



I guess they are actually selling it in a silver and blue now too. I may have to see about trading mine in.

Graded

So they finally got all the dirt out of my driveway and in the backyard. With a little grading and such, we are just waiting for them to lay down the sod.

Dirt

My dirt has arrived.

Backyard Landscaping

After month of rain, interviewing contractors and plain old procrastinating, the backyard landscaping has finally begun.


I've opted for the simplest (i.e. cheapest) possible scenario -- just adding some grass along the top of the property while leaving the bottom "California Natural" (or unfinished as you would call this in other places).



I'll post some more photos once they start laying sod down.

The Baroque Cycle

Normally, I wouldn't think it momentous enough to blog about my reading achievements (although I am sure it will come as a surprise that I am actually literate for some of you), but I have had to make an exception for my latest reading foray. After three books, 2652 pages and over six months of reading, I have finally finished Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle. The Baroque Cycle is Neal's prequel to his excellent "Cryptonomicon", which had hooked me years earlier due to my insomnia on my frequent long-haul over the Pacific flights, and carries on his habit of intensive researching detail and massive page counts.

Set in the late 1700s, the trilogy tells a fictional tale of the transformation of the world's economy weaved through the major historical events and characters of the time. As in the Cryptonomicon, we are again dealing with the mysterious Enoch Root, the Shaftoe and Waterson clans. Although the topic seems to have little to do with Neal's forte (Crypto and futurism), after the first few chapters, you can start to see the parallels. While I won't give too much away (after all there is a lot of detail in the 2600 pages), I found the first book interesting but somewhat slow and confusing, the second book spotty (although the sections with Pirate Jack were quite good) and the final books excellent.

Should you want to embark on this reading adventure, make sure you wait until all of three books appear in paperback -- the hardcovers are really heavy to read in bed:
"Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)" (Neal Stephenson)
"The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)" (Neal Stephenson)
"The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)" (Neal Stephenson)

I am betting that Neal might make a (set of) book(s) that fit in between the Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle next.