Assorted Notes

I should still be asleep. Inexplicably woke up at 5am (out of a decent dream, i might add - sigh), spent two hours failing to drift back off, finally gave up; rolled out of bed and made coffee. What does one do this early in the morning (on a virtual Saturday, no less)? This reminds me of when this same thing happened during (i think) my senior year of college. I was so annoyed at the lost sleep that i refused to do anything useful; instead i sat around and watched Sailor Moon.

I lieu of dubbed anime (i prefer subtitles, hmmph!), i thought i'd catch up on some writing.

Spent yesterday walking around San Francisco with a group of friends (and new friends) - one of my coworkers led a "city hike" as he called it. We started in the Mission District and took a scenic route up to Twin Peaks. I really enjoyed finally getting a non-touristy view of the city, passing through various neighborhoods and spectacular viewpoints. It's way too easy to forget that i now live in the proximity of viewpoints like this:




It felt like a summer day, but apparently it was autumn on this street:


And a shot from Twin Peaks (we arrived right around sunset):


I'll post the rest of my photos on Facebook (probably later today).

The exercise itself felt great (we covered maybe 6-7 miles total) and also satisfied my recent craving for some quality outdoor time. We're so spoiled on the weather out here, there's no excuse for wasting it. Also provided much-needed motivation to start organizing group hikes again. I have a growing list of bay area trails i want to hit, and enough people in the group expressed interest in joining. Rock.

We ended up getting dinner at this ah-MAZing sandwich shop in the Castro called Ike's Place. (To those of you who live in the city, it's near 16th and Sanchez - go eat there, you will not be disappointed.) I went with a simple turkey and ham with brie and a touch of pesto, served hot on a whole wheat sub roll. Mmm, that sandwich was so good - i wish i was eating it right now.

...

Hmm, what else. I finally got my shredder this week and started tearing through the boxes of ancient bills and bank statements that i saved for no good reason. Last year i finally went paperless, at least as much as possible. E-statements from all of my banks, e-bills for everything supported. I started using online billpay years ago (greatest thing since sliced bread). I still get paper bills from a few of my utilities ("Looks like someone's living in the past! Contemporiiizzee, man!") as well as health insurance and other stuff, so i've established a 3-year retention policy for such rubbish. Everything for a given year gets dumped into an Amazon box; after 3 years the whole box gets introduced to my new friend:


(Feeeed me!)


Speaking of new, inanimate friends, i finally got around to building the data storage solution i've wanted for years:


The enclosure is the cute little D-Link DNS-321; it plugs right into my router so i can access it anywhere inside my network. I'm running 2 Terabytes of hard drives in a RAID-1 configuration (full redundancy, so if one drive crashes, all of my data is still preserved on the other). FINALLY, my data is safe - finally i can sleep at night, knowing that all of my irreplaceable photos, email, and journal entries will no longer eat it if my Seagate dies. Now my only threat is fire (my next step will be to stash an external drive in a safe-deposit box).

Ok, off to get some more coffee, then get some work done, and then hopefully be tired enough for a nap. Happy Sunday, everyone! T-minus 2 days!