So while fucking around and waiting for the other half to get home (and learn that his birthday present has come early) I turned on a show on TV called Californication. I'd read about it - it's starring David Duchovny, my unromantic fantasy from the XFiles.

So, I turn it on. The very first thing I catch (I'm a minute late tuning in) is Mulder saying "fuck". Now, I know, i know - he's not mulder, but what the fuck - MULDER JUST SAID FUCK. It's cool - he continues to talk with only an occasional "fuck". I'm breathing. Then, once i've gotten yahoo all setup on this new birthday laptop, I looked back at the screen. Mulder is laying on the bed, high. His partner is standing up, nekkid, asking for a review. What the hell happened to Women's Lib? She then asks Mulder to "fuck me. Just fuck me." OMG, I think i'm on the floor. Mulder proceeds to do this doggy style (and on a separate note, if Mulder does Scully in ANY way in the next movie i'll seriously be pissed and ask for my money back) - he's so high he bangs into her, bounces off of her, bangs his head on the wall and falls over off the bed. He gets up, holds the painting at his waist (cuz you know, I gotta see the entirely nekkid hot chick but not even a pubic hair and just a hint of Mulder's ass) - and then this happens.

The door to the room opens.
His ex-"wife", daughter, ex-"wifes" new fiancee and business manager are standing there.
Mulder, who's still holding the painting at waist level like an incredibly surreally large phallus proceeded to barf. On the painting. Then, realizing his, you know, mulder phallus is staring at the entire group of people in the door, tilts the painting to cover his Mulder glory. Barf rolls down the painting. Woman on bed proceeds to barf. And he laughs.

OMFG.

I seriously had to get up and get an ice cube. I feel like i'm on a bad high. High, in the twilight zone. WTF. WTF@%#@%^@#^#$@^#$^#$^

Does anyone else... FEEL ME?!

I finally splurged and bought a Tamron 90 F2.8 for my Nikon today. It was a hard and painful decision to make - buy the cheaper tamron with better sharpness or buy the marketing behind the Nikon 105 VR and pay twice as much - but i went for better quality. Woo hoo. Here is the initial shot and fruit of my first labour:

OK, not really a snow day, as evidenced by the 1hour+ commute to the summit on Southbound 17, but what the heck. It's still cool! For those of you on the east coast, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about. Yeah it's just snow - but how often do you see summer-green snow kissed mountains in a day? =)

... I loved this young, young man.
He spoke to me in ways i'd known
Would draw me down to land.
He anchored me and kissed me hard
And took my breath away
With promises of "friends for life"
That took us very far.

Very far indeed but not enough
To bridge that chasm wide;
He cheated once and most likely twice
And smiled as my heart in shards.
I fretted and wavered and wanted him back
And not back but back again,
While I teetered and tottered he never did bother
To call or write one note again.

It's funny how life at the time seems so cruel
I didn't know then what to do;
The passage of time and healing inside
Makes it so simple now what was good.
What if i'd stayed? What if we'd continued?
Those questions no longer haunt;
From one woman to the next he flounders and flails
And lands with no depth in the taunt.

I attracted the broken, the weary and torn,
A cause for the day to belate;
But he was the water and I was the stone
He had no form to relate
And as soon as the winds and the seasons changed
He was gone from my life here and now;
To reenter when he needs the shoulder that lays
Straight out hard and solid to comfort his brow.

And so now I come to the point of this rhyme, I have made up my mind,
We are done you and I, in more ways than one.
Thank God you're up North and away with your cries,
A friend I no longer want.
No more will we continue down this soot trodden path
You have nothing to offer I know.
I begrudge you nothing, not a tear in the world,
Cuz to the world you are dead - it just doesn't show.

Howdy folks - if any of you have used photoworks.com you know their photo cards are unique - they're not the traditional two-fold cards that are 5x7 or so. If anyone knows of ANOTHER site that offers untraditional cards like photoworks.com - please comment here!

Thanks. =)

So at work we do these trip reports when we go away for work, and considering what's going on with my life these days, I did a "personal" trip report for Italy, and sent it out to friends. I'll have to post it here and share - but right now there's so much going on and so much to take in that I just don't have it in me to post anything. I want to share what i'm looking at right now - granted this is a night shot, but my hotel windows are dirty and i don't want to have a bad shot of this, so here you go...


The Eiffel tower at night, from "behind" in the park where it sprays water on your back for some reason... =)

Yes, it's true.

The great callas has fallen. In love. With her iPod.

It's so frickin awesome.

I received an iPod 60GB for my birthday, even if it is an early gift. I was a good girl of course; I didn't open it at work, I didn't plug it in, but I did, however, blow $80 on a case (it's awesome altho a bitch to get on), clip on earbud converters (hrmm, i don't think i'm liking them, altho I don't think Apple's are going to solve my problem, which might be innate to earbuds themselves and hence i'll have to suck it up) and the remote - which in my opinion Apple should include on the 60 GB model but what the hell. We haven't seen over-priced and over hyped marketing on merchandise since the Elmo craze. Who am I to stop capitalism?

I started moving my currect MP3 collection from disk to iPod at 11:14pm this evening. It was complete at 11:48pm; 8.53GB of music, constituting 1405 songs in 34 minutes. Whoa. Whoa!

My ex tells me there's a sound problem with the iPod. I guess we're about to find out!

Thoughts? Favourite podcasts or playlists you'd like to share? Show me yours and i'll show you mine! =)

I'm curious as to what you all think. Please respond with your thoughts!

Currently, there are a number of places online that you can order "photo books" - archival quality picture books, is how they are marketed. I've personally ordered from Shutterfly and Ofoto and i've just ordered from snapfish. What do you guys think of their quality, if you've used them? Specifically, what did you think of their picture resolution output (could you see dots or specks of colour instead of smooth unbroken ink, or were the color balances off and the pictures too red or too yellow, etc)

Poll #333970 ofoto
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How do you rate Ofoto.com's photo books?

Poll #333971 shutterfly
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How do you rate shutterfly.com's photo books?

Poll #333972 snapfish
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How do you rate snapfish.com's photo books?

Poll #333973 other
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Know of any other sites that offer photo books?

If you were in my kitchen right now, what would you cook for me?

It's called "The Unix-Hater's Handbook". Email me if you find it or even better, want to send it to me =)

Here's my favourite part.

Anti-Forward

By Dennis Ritchie

From: dmr@plan9.research.att.com
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 00:38:07 EST
Subject: anti-foreword

To the contributers to this book:

I have succumbed to the temptation you offered in your preface: I do
write you off as envious malcontents and romantic keepers of memories.
The systems you remember so fondly (TOPS-20, ITS, Multics,
Lisp Machine, Cedar/Mesa, the Dorado) are not just out to pasture,
they are fertilizing it from below.

Your judgments are not keen, they are intoxicated by metaphor. In
the Preface you suffer first from heat, lice, and malnourishment, then
become prisoners in a Gulag. In Chapter 1 you are in turn infected by
a virus, racked by drug addiction, and addled by puffiness of the
genome.

Yet your prison without coherent design continues to imprison you.
How can this be, if it has no strong places? The rational prisoner
exploits the weak places, creates order from chaos: instead, collectives
like the FSF vindicate their jailers by building cells almost com-
patible with the existing ones, albeit with more features. The
journalist with three undergraduate degrees from MIT, the researcher
at Microsoft, and the senior scientist at Apple might volunteer a few
words about the regulations of the prisons to which they have been
transferred.

Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want
the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other
times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to
use it; sometimes one wonders why you just don't shut up and tell
people to buy a PC with Windows or a Mac. No Gulag or lice, just a
future whose intellectual tone and interaction style is set by Sonic the
Hedgehog. You claim to seek progress, but you succeed mainly in
whining.

Here is my metaphor: your book is a pudding stuffed with apposite
observations, many well-conceived. Like excrement, it contains
enough undigested nuggets of nutrition to sustain life for some. But
it is not a tasty pie: it reeks too much of contempt and of envy.

Bon appetit!

Lastnight we took a customer out to Palio d'Asti - a fabulous Italian restaurant on Sacramento Street in San Francisco.

As it turns out, the restaurant is themed - Il Palio is a horse race that happens in Asti Italy - a famous medieval bareback horse race. More information can be found here.

Camille Henderson? A couple of years ago she was rumoured to have a CD on the horizon, released by Nettwerk - but as far as anyone can tell, it never came to be. She's not doing backup for the new Sarah CD either. Ideas?

Opening page, taken from The Supreme Court's website. It is only an excerpt, but following this, read the yahoo part:


Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U. S. C. §1226(c), “[t]he
Attorney General shall take into custody any alien who” is removable
from this country because he has been convicted of one of a specified
set of crimes, including an “aggravated felony.” After respondent, a
lawful permanent resident alien, was convicted in state court of firstdegree
burglary and, later, of “petty theft with priors,” the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) charged him with being deportable
from the United States in light of these convictions, and detained
him pending his removal hearing. Without disputing the
validity of his convictions or the INS’ conclusion that he is deportable
and therefore subject to mandatory detention under §1226(c), respondent
filed a habeas corpus action challenging §1226(c) on the
ground that his detention thereunder violated due process because
the INS had made no determination that he posed either a danger to
society or a flight risk. The District Court agreed and granted respondent’s
petition subject to the INS’ prompt undertaking of an individualized
bond hearing, after which respondent was released on
bond. In affirming, the Ninth Circuit held that §1226(c) violates substantive
due process as applied to respondent because he is a lawful
permanent resident, the most favored category of aliens. The court
rejected the Government’s two principal justifications for mandatory
detention under §1226(c), discounting the first—ensuring the presence
of criminal aliens at their removal proceedings—upon finding
that not all aliens detained pursuant to §1226(c) would ultimately be
deported, and discounting the second—protecting the public from
dangerous criminal aliens—on the grounds that the aggravated fel-
ony classification triggering respondent’s detention included crimes
(such as respondent’s) that the court did not consider “egregious” or
otherwise sufficiently dangerous to the public to necessitate mandatory
detention. Relying on Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U. S. 678, the court
concluded that the INS had not provided a justification for no-bail
civil detention sufficient to overcome a permanent resident alien’s
liberty interest.


And now, the yahoo.com part:

Court Says Legal Immigrants Can Be Held Without Bail
39 minutes ago Add Top Stories - The New York Times to My Yahoo!


By DAVID STOUT The New York Times

WASHINGTON, April 29 - The Supreme Court ruled today, in a case with significant impact on the rights of noncitizens, that the federal government can detain legal immigrants without bail during their deportation proceedings.


The court upheld, 5 to 4, the strict rules of the 1996 immigration law, which mandates detention of immigrants who have committed certain crimes even as those immigrants challenge their deportation.


``Congress regularly makes rules that would be unacceptable if applied to citizens,'' the court said in a summary attached to the opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist.


The case decided today, Demore v. Kim, No. 01-1491, has been closely followed by immigrants' rights groups and lawyers who follow immigration issues. Today's decision made it clear that immigrants - even those in the United States legally - may have far more to lose than American citizens if they are convicted of crimes, and not necessarily heinous ones.


``We hold that Congress, justifiably concerned that deportable criminal aliens who are not detained continue to engage in crime and fail to appear for their removal hearings in large numbers, may require that persons such as respondent be detained for the brief period necessary for their removal proceedings,'' Justice Rehnquist wrote.


The ``respondent'' is Hyung Joon Kim, who came to the United States in 1984 at age 6. While still a child, he became a lawful permanent resident. In 1996, when he was a teenager, he was convicted of burglary and the next year was found guilty of petty theft.


He completed his sentence in California state prison and, the day after his release, was detained by immigration officials without bail to await deportation.


After more than three months in custody, Mr. Kim filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, contending that the 1996 law's no-bail provision violated his constitutional rights. A federal district court and the United States Court of Appeals (news - web sites) for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, agreed with him.


But today, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit, and two other circuit courts that had come to similar conclusions. In so doing, the high court agreed with the government's contention, made in arguments before the justices in January, that the appeals judges had improperly substituted their judgment for those of lawmakers.


Given America's often ambivalent relationship with immigrants, today's ruling will likely not be the last on immigrants' rights. Nor will the Kim case be the last controversy, either in the courts or Congress.


As for the 1996 law that its critics say is too harsh, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, ``Congress adopted this provision against a backdrop of wholesale failure by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to deal with increasing rates of criminal activity by aliens.''


Joining in the majority were Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites), Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) and Clarence Thomas (news - web sites).


Justices David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens (news - web sites), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (news - web sites) and Stephen G. Breyer dissented. ``The Court's judgment is unjustified by past cases or current facts,'' Justice Souter wrote in an opinion that rang with indignation in spots.


``Due process calls for an individual determination before someone is locked away,'' Justice Souter wrote at one point. He noted that Mr. Kim had completed his state prison sentence, and that he was not considered dangerous.


Moreover, Justice Souter wrote, lawful permanent residents like Mr. Kim are the most privileged class of noncitizens - that is, they are typically ``developing economic, familial, and social ties indistinguishable from those of a citizen.'' Many lawful permanent residents aspire to, and eventually obtain citizenship, he noted.


``This case is not about the national government's undisputed power to detain aliens in order to avoid flight or prevent danger to the community,'' Justice Souter concluded. ``The issue is whether that power may be exercised by detaining a still lawful permanent resident alien when there is no reason for it and no way to challenge it.''


In a closing lament, Justice Souter said the majority's finding ``is devoid of even ostensible justification in fact and at odds with the settled standard of liberty.''

A good friend of mine forwarded this link to me - we'd spent many a lunches at Lido's, dining on Spicy Toasted Ravioli's, ripping on a dicksmack we worked with, and having a blast. It's a little piece of our childhood, so to speak, and I'm saddened to see it go =(

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Taken from the The Pioneer Press


Posted on Sat, Apr. 26, 2003

ROSEVILLE: Lido's has last spaghetti supper

Slower sales, retirement among reasons for closing
BY GITA SITARAMIAH
Pioneer Press

After 46 years, the family behind Lido's Italian Market-Café & Bar in Roseville is calling it quits after tonight's dinner, giving customers one final chance to get their fix of spaghetti and meatballs made from the Labalestra family recipe.

Despite a loyal following, sales were flat in the past couple of years and had dropped even more in the past few months.

"In the middle of the week, lunch and dinner is very slow," said partner John Labalestra.

The family made an attempt to sell the Lido's business but couldn't find any takers. The building is being sold to the people behind the Sidney's chain. Partner Kenny Plunkett wasn't ready to discuss details of his plans to unveil a restaurant on Oct. 1, but Labalestra hinted that it will have a sports-entertainment theme.

Labalestra blamed the tight economy and uncertain times for the family's lack of success in passing on the Lido's name. But the big reason for the closing, he said, is because his mother, Frances Labalestra, wants to retire. She has been greeting customers since Day 1. She tried to stop playing hostess last year but couldn't stay away from the business. Son Michael Labalestra, who is also involved in the operation, has had some health problems as well.

Lido's dates back to the fall of 1956, when Frances and her late husband, Nicholas, unveiled Lido Cafe in Falcon Heights, serving Italian-American fare.

In the 1970s, the family renamed the restaurant Lido Café Italia. When they outgrew the Falcon Heights space, they moved to Roseville in 1987. The restaurant went through another name change in 1995, when a deli and market were added.

Even though they're getting out of the restaurant business, the Labalestra brothers plan to continue distributing Lido's pasta sauces to local supermarkets. John Labalestra said, "We're holding our heads high."

I'll post a more comprehensive update next week, since i've been busy this week, but hopefully will have some things to discuss on what happened this week, next week. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been an amazing week, and i've had the chance to work with some amazing people. I've had some unexpected help from people I don't know, in large contrast to the lack of help and support I've received from those I do. All the good details coming up!

sensitive_one has kicked me in the ass and told me to go take some pictures. I've been checking out a Nikon I think I will score shortly (and a macro lens i've been looking at for 2 years) but in the mean time, I decided to take a picture of what's been breaking me heart today. I'm giving this bottle up as a gift tonight, and it's one of my more expensive favourites. I know the folks receiving it will enjoy it, but I thought I should take a picture to commemorate the moment =)

Poll #93938 President-2004-1
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

As of today, who do you think will win the Presidential election in 2004?

A long time ago, my friend, DanL, introducted me to netset - a digital/inet version of Settlers of Catan. I had gotten addicted to settlers just prior to me moving to Toronto - and I actually scored the board game and expansion pack in Toronto (god bless Yonge Street and the underground). I've recently started playing netset again - the author was obnoxious, as he coded specific hacks to allow various conditions to "win" - certain nicks, certain colors, and a combination thereof would allow you to easily dominate a 2 player board. But it's fun, fun fun!