At the height of the season, by the Bay, Dungeness crab is ludicrously cheap--around five bucks a pound if you buy it directly from the crabbers on the wharf. Fisherman's Wharf is one of those places where real San Franciscans do not go. It is a tourist sacrifice zone, all dazed-looking out-of-towners wearing I Love San Francisco fleeces and trying ( Read more... )

Folsom St. Fair is how I know my life is getting back to normal. I missed last year's fair. I don't even remember where I was--I thought that it might have been Cambodia, but when I looked at my calendar it turned out to be Tbilisi. I saw the Stalin Museum and drank strange alcohols and joked around with a journalist from Foreign Policy who had ( Read more... )

I did the math. Over the last three months, I have been out of the country noticeably more often than I've been in it. I have traveled approximately 35,000 miles. I have been to ten cities in seven countries. I have experienced all of the jet lag. All of it. If you think you are jet lagged right now, it is an illusion. I assure you, the jet lag is ( Read more... )

It's summertime, which means now is the season when I go to hacker conferences. In July, I went out among the open source hackers in Spain. August is the time for Black Hat, DEFCON, and BSides in Las Vegas. My co-workers have gone off to OHM to camp with hackers in the Netherlands. And in a few weeks, I will visit the hinterlands of Columbus, Ohio ( Read more... )

I don't have a subconscious. I have dreams like a hammer to the skull ( Read more... )

Remember that time I said that Bunker 3 would be ready by the end of May? You know, the last time I actually posted anything to this place? Present Me cannot believe that Past Me was ever so naive. Past Me thought she was a cynic. Oh yes, she thought jadedly, that remodeling project will always take twice as much time and cost twice as much as you ( Read more... )

This is not my life. I can tell because I seem to be living in a beige Mission Bay blahplex and driving a Chevy Impala. This is a temporary state of affairs. J and I are living in the only corporate housing we could find that would take our cats while Bunker 3 is being remodeled. And the Impala is a rental that I'm driving while my Golf is at the ( Read more... )

I suppose there is some benefit to writing here, because I can look back and see that this time last year I was happy. I said I could kiss 2011, didn't I? I said I could kiss it with tongue. And January 2012 Me hoped that January 2013 Me would feel the same way. And that's funny, because in the long run, optimists are always always wrong ( Read more... )

Remember this summer, when J and I bought a warehouse loft in SOMA? At long last, we have moved into it. Bunker 2 is dead. Long live Bunker 3. You may ask yourself why on Earth it has taken us this long to move half a dozen blocks. And I would be happy to answer that question as soon as I stop hitting my head against this wall ( Read more... )

E says that I only write when I am sick. She is right. I have a cold that I am profoundly afraid is going to turn into Death Cough, and so I blog. The whole summer went by without any writing. Let it be known that since June, I have done the following things ( Read more... )