I don’t think I’ve mentioned this to anyone but I feel compelled to mention Trader Joe’s, a local supermarket chain. They have a store across the street from the office and they sell very good, very cheap food. It’s become my go-to place for quick, cheap, healthy meals.
For example, today I had a gigantic salad and some Indian food for a little over $5. And most of these things do not include chemical ingredients I cannot pronounce. This is perhaps the only thing so far that I’ve found to be cheaper than the Texan equivalent.
As you probably also know by now, from my former office in Austin I had quite the view, which allowed me every now and then to catch a glimpse of events around the area: a mall fire, a plane crash, etc.
I just received this photo of the smoke from the nearby wild fires, taken from the top floor of MoPac C. Let’s hope they are controlled and extinguished soon. It can’t hurt to do a little dance for Tlaloc, either.
Discover the unseen world of the Tactile Dome—an interactive excursion through total darkness, where your sense of touch becomes your only guide!
Built in 1971, the Tactile Dome is a maze you crawl through in total, absolute darkness. You rely only on your sense of touch to find your way around. In my case, the sense of touch in my head, since I kept banging it against things.
In order to go through, you need to crawl, climb, crouch, jump, roll, swing, swim andy fight your way through a small army of zombies… in total darkness.
The whole thing takes from 5 to 15 minutes. It’s quite a strange experience, which is why some people panic and can’t make it through. I was ok, I went through four times.
SPOILER WARNING: I will now reveal some exclusive photographs from the interior of the Tactile Dome. If you would like to experience it first hand, stop reading now. You’ve been warned.
We went to Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception last week for Amit’s birthday, in San Francisco. Specifically, we went to the Exploratorium After Dark, which makes it socially acceptable for a fully grown adult to hog all the experiments on display. Add a little alcohol, and you have hours of fun. It’s great and highly recommended.
Human drinking from a toilet. Bad human!The amazing man made tornado
And now check out this amazing video, and try to guess how the hell I did it.
The highlight of the museum was the Tactile Dome. But that will have to wait to another post.
Whenever I wake up on a Sunday, I can open the door and walk 30 feet to the well-regardedKensington Farmers’ Market. I’ve tried a few things, all of them Californialicious. Isn’t that neat?
Last Saturday we attended the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma. It was my first time attending a car race, and it showed. Everyone had chairs, coolers, drinks, food, huge hats, ear plugs, etc.
I had some sunscreen.
In spite of my rookie mistakes, it was a very enjoyable time. I bet that if I knew what the hell is going on and I was fully prepared, I would have had an even better time (Austin, get ready).
People kept telling me how Berkeley is so much “weirder” than Austin. So as I headed out to grab me some lunch I was excited to see this fully ornamented “Frida Kahlo” car:
Being a mild germophobe, I made sure to wipe clean my new cube using (what else?) 3M Desk and Office cleaner. Even though everything seemed perfectly clean, a vast amount of dirt came out.
Hi-tech filth, after pass two.
This got me thinking about how brilliant the designers of the modern office are. They make them look clean regardless of the amount of dirt being hidden in plain sight.
My theory is that the country’s top camouflage designers working for the army eventually run out of things to do and go on to tackle a harder challenge: Making the workspace of an engineer look clean.
For instance, compare these two photos of the desk, before and after heavy amounts of soap and half a roll of paper towels:
Desk surface, before.Desk surface, after.
See the difference? I didn’t think so.
Even more striking is the design of office carpets. These patterns will hide anything smaller than 3/4 of an inch. Drop a penny, an earring, a screw and you will never find it again. Never.
Other things, such as giant coffee stains are completely hidden from plain sight too. See the photo below. Can you spot the giant coffee stain?
