Posts from — January 2009

I sent this out over Twitter instead of putting it on the blog:

Hershey Co. said Tuesday it plans to close Scharffen Berger’s West Berkeley manufacturing plant sfgate.com.

And I received an email from my favorite “chocolate store”, Fog City News shortly afterwards with two interesting notes:

My store manager, Venee, was an employee of Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker until she joined our team this past August and she found out that all tours of the factory have been cancelled effective immediately. (Those she spoke to said the company would not want to run the risk of tour guests trying to make off with ‘mementos.’)

And more importantly:

There are a number of terrific locally owned and operated chocolate makers and chocolatiers we continue to represent so if you would rather “buy local” please consider these brands that we offer (in alphabetical order): Chocolate Visions, Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates, Guittard Chocolate, Michael Mischer Chocolates, Original Beans (brand new – more later!), Recchiuti Confections, and Richard Donnelly Fine Chocolates (who will be our guest this Friday, January 30).

Stupid Hersheys

One other tidbit of info I didn’t realize:

Most Scharffen Berger product has actually been produced in Illinois and Pennsylvania for some time now, but it remains to be seen whether other Scharffen Berger limited bars will be unveiled in the future.

I don’t want to jinx this… and I don’t want to use Maizious’ name for ill-gotten gains. But I have to say, I think it’s quite nice that the past 10(?) or more times that I’ve gone out to get nachos somewhere in SF (ie Pancho’s) in my car- I’ve been rewarded with a great parking spot when I’ve arrived back at my apartment.

I know this will ruin the streak, but Maizious works in mysterious ways and looks out for all of his nacho-eating children.

Some people have asked me about my “long” jogging route. I’ve said that I really like the fact that I’ve slowly built up to this route since starting out from walking/jogging intervalson Thanksgiving.

But the question I get has been, “if that’s the route and it ends at the water and then you jog up a few blocks… how do you get home, or what are you doing with your car?”

The answer is I cheat and take the bus (5 or 38) back home from the beach. Hey, I’ve earned the ride.

Someday I’ll be able to run all the way back up and home though.

Tonight’s game:



via Joanna– thanks!

As a semi-closeted comic book fan, I was quite taken with two recent blog updates from Mark Waid on story telling.

I usually just read or plow through the books and just think- that was good or bad or I liked it/didn’t like it. I rarely step back and think of the craft of storytelling.

But I think I learned more about storytelling and comics from just two blog posts than I have from years of passive reading.

1) on Caption use

2) More Than Words

As a bonus link, here’s CBR’s Best 100 Comics of 2008

Steve is not happy.

Google google No google Radiohead

Ebert has an interesting post up about a movie called “Sita Sings The Blues”.

I saw the link on a friend’s FB wall and then read the column about the film and filmmaker.

And then I was reminded again how small a world we’re in. The Karl he mentions in the story used to work at CollabNet too (he’s here now. And when I showed friends on IRC the story, one of them recognized another commenter.

So I got a few comments and a lot of private emails from you all along the lines of “that batter blaster looks sick… but I bought some”.

But I didn’t hear any follow up. Did you use it? Did you like it? Hater it? Agree that from-scratch waffles are better, but for convenience sake BB is good? Send me some more emails people! Let me quote you in the next post!