Mags and I woke up at the break of…well actually at the break of nothing. We woke up at 4:30am. We BARTed it to the airport and I promptly slept through the entire flight to Portland.

The first pleasant surprise in Portland was that the light rail picks you up right outside of baggage claim. We made it to our wonderful host’s house that he shares with three roommates and then went out to a wonderful pho lunch.

Mags and I then headed to City Bikes Cooperative to rent a couple of bikes. Nice folks there. I think I have been in four co-ops in Portland now. It is a welcome sight.

We took our bikes along the east and west banks of the Willamette River on the Esplanade, which is a walk- and bike-friendly area mostly consisting of separated pathways. Some of the views were really beautiful. A few places that we stopped:
Umpqua Ice Cream: had some delicious spumoni ice cream
The Aerial Tram: Super-futuristic looking gondola thing that takes you quickly up a hill to some university hospital. Beautiful views. If only we had thought to take our bikes up there so we could ride them back down…
Shareit Square: Some residents completely redid an intersection, painting the roadway and setting up little tables and benches on each of the four corners, including a free tea station and a free book exchange station, both unattended.

It is nice biking in Portland. Throughout the whole of yesterday and so far today, I haven’t been honked at ONCE.

Last night, our wonderful host cooked for us. Mags went to bed, and then our host and I went our bar hopping along Alberta Street. Fun times.

Today, Mags is in her Physical Therapy class so I am on my own. I started by getting some hippie-dippie breakfast which was delicious. I then went to an Army Navy surplus store where I got four shirts for $22. Already feeling hungry again, I went to Hot Lips Pizza for some good pizza and some great blackberry soda that they make themselves. Now I am at the Red and Black Cafe, a worker-owned and -managed cafe in the Southeast. Today is my southeast day.

Other stops today were a nice co-op grocery store and a computer place that refurbishes/repurposes used computers and puts them to good use. It is volunteer run.

Tonight Mags and I are heading to our next host’s place. This guy stayed with me in San Francisco for a week so it’ll be good to see him again.

Adios, loyal readers!

Tomorrow morning, I will be leaving for a much-needed vacation. Mags and I are going first to Portland until Sunday, and then we are off to Hawaii on Monday until April 5, to see Tim, Kelly, and their two boys. I can’t wait!

Almost as soon as I moved to San Francisco, I started volunteering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). I was mostly folding t-shirts and stuffing envelopes after getting off of work from my night-shift job.

The EFF is a civil liberties organization that concentrates on the digital world. Think the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), but much more focused and much smaller. So, if you know me, you’ll know that this sounds like an organization that would appeal to me very much. It blends my passion for technology with my passion for politics and activism.

For a few months I also did some work with the EFF on the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. However, after getting my current job with IS Logistics, I couldn’t volunteer very often as my job generally required my presence during business hours.

In the two years since then, I have remained friends with several of the EFF folks as well as helped out from time to time a the EFF booth at conferences like Macworld and Linuxworld.

And then one night a couple of weeks ago, I noticed a post on Twitter from the EFF feed, which I follow, that advertised for an opening in the Systems Administrator position. Being the opportunist that I am, I immediately jumped on it. I dusted off the ol’ resume, typed up a cover letter, ran both by about three people, and sent them on in. Two days later, I was in the office for an interview with six people.

About a week later, last Friday, I received in my inbox a technical challenge of sorts, where I was to complete two technical tasks and submit to EFF my work. The problems weren’t easy but they sure were fun. I hacked away and sent in my work, the quality of which I was confident in.

First thing on Monday morning, I was asked to come in for a second interview, which was today. I gladly obliged, and was offered the job at the end of today’s interview.

The culture at EFF is really great. You can almost feel the vibrations the geek vibe is so high. Everyone there cares deeply about civil liberties. From the good deal of time I have spent in the office, it seems to me that there is a lot of respect going around – everyone is trusted to get their job done, and they do. The EFF is highly respected in the geek community, even appearing on stickers on The IT Crowd. EFF is also popular on geek hangouts Slashdot and Boing Boing.

Some of the issues that the EFF deals with are things like protecting your privacy from illegal wiretapping by AT&T and the NSA, fighting for your rights to do with what you want with your electronics, such as the iPhone, and intellectual property, among many other issues.

By the time I get fully up to speed, I’ll be the only Systems Administrator at EFF. That means that all desktop, server, network, and phone issues will be my responsibility. I’m looking forward to the challenge, and I am looking forward to learning.

The EFF is located at 18th and Shotwell in San Francisco’s Mission district, which is noted for its large Latino population, not to mention the large amounts of tacquerias.

The new job is a little under two miles from home, which means it is about a 30-minute walk or maybe a fifteen-minute bike ride. I think I’ll ride my bike most days.

When asking during the first interview about opportunities for training and conferences, I was told that the credibility that comes along with working for the EFF may actually get me invitations to speak at conferences. I hope this day comes Imagine an expenses-paid trip to go to Vegas for Defcon!

One more little perk is that I may get the opportunity to contribute to the EFF Deeplinks blog.

While I am excited to join the EFF, that is not to say I didn’t enjoy my current job. I wasn’t exactly looking for a new job. I learned a lot with IS Logistics and I worked with some great people.

As for my celebration tonight, I am taking it easy. I had a migraine last night, and while the pain is gone, my head is telling me not to aggravate things by having a couple of brewskies. So I’ll save it for another night.

Suffice it to say, I am ecstatic.

So I officially gained about ten pounds in maybe a little over a month. Unacceptable.

It’s time for another turbo diet and exercise program!

This one is for serious. By the end of it I want to be “carved out of wood,” as señor Peter so aptly put it (as also heard in Fight Club). I hope to get to “carved out of wood” status in maybe a little over two months. Here is my plan:

Exercise
The main component of my plan will be exercise. Three days per week I will be going on a long-distance run. I am currently planning on this being a twelve-mile run, which is actually two miles more than I have ever run. But I am confident I can do it (especially with the sweet new kicks that I just got). The other three days per week, the main two components will be a calisthenics workout that my buddy showed me a while back (and almost made me puke the first time I did it) along with the one hundred push ups program. Sundays will either be a day of rest or a fun exercise day – basketball, bike ride, whatever. Since Monday, Wednesday, and Friday consist of little more than thirty minutes of exercise, I’d likely mix in some bike riding, walking, a short run, or some pilates on these days as well.

Diet
I am going to start out my diet in a non-strict way. Having said that, I will aim in general to eat better but I am not going to wholly restrict myself to start. I think my staples will be yogurt with granola, eggs with oatmeal, Clif Builder bars, and stir fry.

But one concept that worked well in the past was the idea of punishment. So, I’ve got my weight-tracking spreadsheet going again. If I am above a weight goal on a certain morning, then I have to cut something out of my diet for the remainder of the program. If I miss a day of exercise, same punishment. Things that would be cut out would/could be: sweets, cheese, alcohol, red meat, all land meat, all meat and fried things.

Anyhow, I am excited to get started! On another note, I am going to be sore as hell by the end of this week!

I really love well-put-together, informative and complete tutorials like this. I want to try this soon. Maybe in a few weeks I will put one together.

How to make a soda can stove:

Since living in San Francisco, I have changed as a person in at least a few ways. I have changed in terms of my outlook on life, but, more concretely, I have changed several aspects of my lifestyle. Today I’m going to talk about transportation – how I get from place to place.

The early days: car
I arrived in San Francisco with a 1994 Lexus ES300. It was an incredibly smooth ride, the car was fast, and it looked nice. After getting a raise at work I decided to buy a new car and ended up with a 2006 Honda Civic Si. This might have been my favorite car that I have ever owned. It was sporty-looking and did 0-60 in 6.9 seconds with a manual transmission. But I soon realized how foolish it was to have a car in the city, mostly because of the cost. I paid $300/month for parking (which was probably unnecessary), $300/month in car payments (again, unnecessary – there was no reason I needed anything better than a 15-year-old Civic), $150/month in insurance and $50/month in gas. So several months after buying the car, I sold it. Great move.

Pros: speed of arrival (to most places), convenience in some situations.
Cons: cost, environmental concerns, lack of convenience in most other cases, lack of exercise as part of a lifestyle, difficulty in finding parking, stress while driving, stress when worrying about maintenance, the dividing effects that private transit has on our culture, encouraging a sedentary lifestyle, danger to myself, pedestrians, bicyclists, and other motorists. I didn’t think there were this many cons when I first started thinking about this post, but now that I started typing it, it almost seems as though I am missing some cons.

I ditch the car: bus
After ditching my car, I took a bus most places that were more than a dozen or so blocks. This was fine but I still was irrationally averse to more physical exertion.

Pros: very inexpensive (a Fast Pass is only $45 per month), proximity to other people.
Cons: unreliability of MUNI, lack of exercise as part of a lifestyle, not as fast as a bike.

I get on my feet
At the beginning of 2007, I think it was January 2, I stepped on the scale and it read 198.5. From that moment I was determined to lose weight. Part of the strategy, besides diet and non-lifestyle exercise (that is, exercise for the sake of exercise) was to walk to work every day. I lived two miles away from work and this couldn’t have been a better decision. Sure, on lazy days I would take the bus. But I would say that four out of five days I would walk, both ways. What a beautiful walk it was, too. I started in Russian Hill then walked through Nob Hill and a little bit of the Tenderloin before arriving in north-eastern SOMA. If you’ve never walked through Russian Hill and Nob Hill, I encourage you to do so.

I found that I genuinely enjoyed walking. So I started walking most places that were within two or three miles.
Pros: lifestyle exercise, more intimately discovering the neighborhoods, fresh air, more energy.
Cons: usually slightly slower than the bus (but really only slightly), not as fast as a bike.

Penelope and I meet
I had been wanting a bike for a while and finally got one in mid August of this year. Her name is Penelope and she is green and covered with stickers. This has completely revolutionized how I get places. It has also changed my daily lifestyle. I feel in tune with the “biker culture.” I go to critical mass, I roll my right pant leg up. I’m fit, in shape, feel great when I get off the bike, feel great when I am speeding down a giant hill. In short, I am in love with biking. I’ll take my bike on pretty much any trip. I ride it on two or three round trips to school every week, which is about eight miles each way. The ride to and from school actually ranges from a little faster to a little slower than taking MUNI. Of course on the way there I need to factor in time to stop sweating and change clothes.

Biking sometimes requires a lot of planning ahead: Do you need/have a change of shirt? Do you have an appropriate route mapped out that doesn’t involve hills or highways? Can you bring your bike inside of where you are going, or onboard the train or bus that you are riding? But generally it is incredibly convenient; you just hop on, ride out, and lock the thing up right outside of your destination.

Just last night, Peter-man and I took an exhilarating ride out to 46th and Taraval, got a couple of beers at Riptide, and then rode back. We got to the bar all sweaty, but I didn’t really care. Biking has given me a new outlook on sweat; I don’t mind being sweaty anymore. It’s a very human thing to do.
Pros: lifestyle exercise, faster than almost any form of transit for medium-length trips, inclusion in a common culture, exhilaration from the ride
Cons: sweating, bicycle maintenance, potential for becoming a splatter mark on someone’s windshield

My next form of transit? Probably teleporting.

I wonder if the folks who made this ad realized that they are giving people like me no reason to not vote for these “cronies.” I am represented by Chris Daly in City Hall, and he isn’t up for re-election this time, so this ad doesn’t apply to me anyway. I just find it funny.

I love this Ralph Nader poster. It is a nice change from the BS Barrack Obama propaganda “Change” or “Hope” poster.

Some random rumblings from my gray matter recently:

- I’d like to go on a cross-country bike trip after I graduate. And not just a fast-as-you-can straight shot from San Francisco to Baltimore. More of a San Francisco to Fresno to San Diego to Flagstaff to Phoenix to Austin to Houston to New Orleans to Key West to Atlanta to Baltimore with 25 more destinations in between. And stopping for extended periods to get involved in local social justice movements or to read or to soak up some rays or anything else that floats my boat. And maybe go back and forth and all around a few times. Lots of camping and lots of couch surfing. Anyway, this idea has been occupying much of my thought for the past couple of weeks.

- School has really started to ramp up. I am unbelievably stressed and busy but I am somehow still doing well. I really don’t understand how.

- I am currently reading How Nonviolence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos. I can’t say that I am completely convinced by some of the things he says but it is interesting and generally well-argued nonetheless. I might try to tap out a whole book review after I am finished.