Posts from — June 2009

Reegs had a wine tasting the other night. It was a blind tasting and the theme was Zinfandel.

the tasting table after the reveal

For blind tastings with my SF peeps what we do is bring the bottles in to the host’s place and immediately put them in paper bags. Then on a piece of paper or index card we enter a lot of information: name of wine, varietal, cost, where we bought it, AVA and maybe a little bit more info depending on what’s going on. [my apologies if I've talked about this before but some of you had asked]

Then the host or the assistant will take the bottle and give the bag a random number and note that on the card, then they’ll hide that information from the guests.

Each guest is then given a glass and an index card and pen. The scoring system is declared and explained (we used a 100 point scale w/ no damn decimals) and everyone can start tasting (and eating!). At the end of the night, the host or assistant uses a google docs spreadsheet and tabulates the scores. Then we have a reveal.

Some of the friends are a bit more serious than others so they’ll be pretty clear if they’re competing or not. (Most of the time my SF crew is competing with each other). Saturday’s tasting was a Zinfandel tasting. And most of the crowd was serious. That said- all of this is to have fun, have some good wine, and discover some wines that are new to you.

btw- be careful if you ever try to taste 22 Zins (after having pre-contest wines) in rare 90 degree SF heat. Drink lots of water, do tiny pours and spit out a lot.

At Saturday’s tasting, I wound up getting 2nd place out of the 22 wines we tasted! But….  I cheated. I brought a Zinfandel blend. I’m cool like that.

btw- It was a magnum of Limerick Lane 1023 – which is a 50% Zin / 50% Syrah

Click ‘more’ if you want to see the full list of what the finishers were- I’ll just list the top 10.

btw, my favorite wine of the night was  Pinot Gris that we had before the tasting – Toulouse from the Anderson Valley. Damn good. [Read more →]

My friend Mike S. down in LA has a film project called Project Monkeywrench. He says it’s like “This American Workplace.” With resentment and sabotage. He’d like to get word out about it, so I thought I’d post one of his emails. 

Hey, Everyone.
I launched this last year, and due to the unbelievable response, I’m launching it anew.
Making a short. Need your voices…stories, and so on.

It works like this: I want to hear your anonymous stories of workplace sabotage. Steal a ream of paper? Delete that important file…or file server? “Accidentally” forward that confidential email and get someone fired? Edit subliminal messages into that film you are cutting?

Call 1.877.MKWRENC and tell your sabotage story.
That’s 1.877.659.7362

I’ll edit the audio into a short film. Think “This American Workplace.” With resentment and sabotage.
All confidential!

STICK IT TO THE MAN!!!! AND PLEASE FORWARD…some of the best stuff came from people I don’t know…in regional dialects I barely understand.

Even if you don’t have a story of your own, the most important thing is that this gets out…please circulate.
http://www.bombshelterfilms.com/monkeywrench.html

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME!
Mike Saenz

And if you’re interested, here’s an interview with Mike on DVDfile.com talking about editing Special.

My friend Christine (of white pants fame) launched a side project this week. She started a site called Sugar Dimples where she will chronicle her love of cupcakes and, more importantly, bake and sell you said cupcakes!

So go take a look at her photos, then hit up the order form if you’re interested.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with The Flood-

The Muni Hump and Run story you may have seen Amanda and I chatting about on Twitter and FB (munidiaries). [updated w/ video from NBC news!] *even Joyce has seen him.

10 Best Burgers in Texas- via todd. I’m not sure I agree with the list but whatever. That pic of the burger from Chris Madrid’s is horrible though- their burgers look much better usually.

Twilight comic (see mike draw)

Indian Mangoes

And my favorite story of the week came via a link from Laura F in Vermont: The LearJet Repo Man

And then there’s this video which I loved – esp the ending

Last night I was thinking about finally posting the “Kenny Ace Scooch” story (because it’s Kevin’s favorite and it came up again at work recently). And I was looking up Scottish/Glaswegian accents on youtube.com for inspiration and ideas on transcribing the story as it’s much better when I tell it in person.

Although the following videos have nothing to do with my original story, which I’ll post this weekend, I thought they were pretty damn funny.

The following vids are ads for a pasta company called Dolmio. Someone (some people?) decided to dub their own audio over the original ads to make them Glaswegian.

I’m only posting two that happen to have the least amount of cursing in them, so wear your headphones anyway. If you have time though- watch this one too with the dog comment at the end- it made me tear up laughing for some reason….

note: sorry about the damn formatting- I can’t get this theme to work correctly w/ youtube vids sometimes…

Before I left SA, I had the clarity of mind to order some coffee beans for my return to SF. Based on a recommendation from Ray, I ordered from Weaver’s over in Emeryville.

I hadn’t heard of Weaver’s before. But Ray told me this tidbit (which is on the site):

COFFEE’S BEST-KEPT SECRET – Hand-crafting coffee since 1980, John Weaver apprenticed under two legendary coffee experts, Alfred Peet and Sal Bonavita. John is recognized as one of the most accomplished coffee roasters and tasting experts in the world. After nearly three decades as Master Roaster for Peet’s Coffee, John left to start his own company and launch the brand which bears his name: Weaver’s Coffee & Tea.

I timed it perfectly too- I got the order placed in the nick of time for the weekend roast, and it was at my office on Monday before lunchtime.

Although Ray said he likes the Organic Blend for his shots, I wanted to try the Espresso Blend first.  And you know what? It’s really good.

Or as Debra Morgan would say:

Go get some

Okay, I love toys and have been thinking about two in particular for a while. (This doesn’t mean I’ll get either one though). I’ve been reading a lot about e-book readers like the Kindle, Sony PRS 505 and the FoxIT eSlick reader (hello Calibre!) I’ll save that for another post though.

The other toy I’ve wanted for a while has been a netbook- I even wanted a pepperpad! But c’mon, a pepper pad is crazy price and netbooks are well… let’s just say that’s a lot of “wine money”.  Netbooks are those little sub laptops like a small Mac Air, but $3000 less. But I really wanted one after seeing the model that a co-worker had bought for his CalTrain commute and was using to get on the work VPN -something I can’t do on my Mac at home.

When I was in SA, I got to use my Dad’s Acer Aspire One during my visit. His is set up to use WindowsXP, has a 6 cell battery, and is the 10″ model, not the much smaller one. I used it for two weeks straight, and now I’m an even bigger fan than before.

There are some things I would do to tweak or customize the machine though- mostly for using the trackpad. It has a built-in page scrolling thing that I thought was too sensitive, but otherwise it was great. The keyboard on his was really nice too. Some of the other netbooks I’ve played with in stores were too cramped or had made too many compromises for space.

The netbooks wouldn’t be a good machine for those who don’t have another computer, but as a secondary one to have in the house or for frequent travel, they’re great. (They’re much lighter than regular laptops).

The one app I highly recommend though for everyone, whether they’re using a netbook or not is Dropbox.

I’ve been using it for a while already and installed it on that machine so I could sync some notes and pictures while I was traveling. I was really glad I did so as it turned out I could use some of my previously stored files while I was in SA.

Dropbox is free, so go download it (or be cool and use my referral link so I get more storage space ).

The other app I’ve been playing with a lot lately is Evernote. I don’t use it nearly as much as I do dropbox, but I think it’s definitely worth looking at – especially if you have an iphone and have a weird habit like I do of taking pictures of things to remember them. (I’m looking at you Marc)

Take some time and check out their screencast. It’s a bit long, but try to get to the part where he takes the pic of his ticket stubs and the text-recognition system kicks on. It’s pretty cool.

The last app I’d re-recommend is Skype. I’ve been a user like most of you for a while, but I used it on my dad’s netbook a few times to check the built-in webcam. I keep forgetting how awesome Skype really is. And using it with that netbook was great- if you have skype-out minutes and one of those lil’ machines while travelling, you’d be set for some remote-work fun.