Author Archives: Alan V

Food

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Life has been eventful lately. I’ve been neglecting posting photos, but that’s more because I’ve packed away my old laptop and do not currently have access to Photoshop. Galleries of photos will be forthcoming once I am in Pittsburgh and situated and have a new computer (because resizing hundreds of photos is no fun without batch processing).

Friday was a trip to Mountain View for dinner at New Mongolian BBQ, followed by a trip to Dan’s for games.
Saturday was spent wandering… we headed to Stanford to take photos on campus. Afterward was an impromptu pool party at Katrina’s apartment.
Sunday was spent in San Francisco packing and walking places with Ian (Costco pizza and gelato for lunch!) before Tres Agaves dinner with Mark and Ian.
Monday had a random “we converted to Dell boxes and Linux yay” party at work on the beautiful 42nd floor. They raffled away Dell Minis. I didn’t win one, but I will probably end up getting something similar anyway.
Today was awesome dinner at EAT which featured an amazing salmon and shrimp dish, followed by the most amazing nectarines and plums I’d ever had anywhere (never mind the other parts of the dish that were just as amazing). Afterward there was hot tubbing at Bayside. I will miss having a hot tub.

Good food is one of those things that I should indulge in more often. It’s really enjoyable and going with the right people makes it an awesome experience too.




Tomorrow is my last day in San Francisco. Scary.

Wine Tasting in Sonoma

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Today Sharon drove Richard, Victor, and myself up to Sonoma to do wine tasting and awesomeness.

Brunch at the girl & the fig featured humongous french toast stuffed with lemon cream and covered in blueberry sauce.

We visited four wineries (or at least their tasting centers): Sebastini, Chateau St. Jean, Kenwood, and St. Francis.
Kenwood has a 2009 Yulpa White Zinfandel that I really, really like.
St. Francis had an awesome tasting menu with food accompaniments. I could eat entire loaves of their sweet baguette. Nom. The pork and cheese were also really good.

Tweeted photos exist.
Tasty tasty food.

So overall it’s been quite the awesome (and busy) weekend.

Tons of thanks to Sharon for driving today and hosting yesterday, and to Charles and Matt for hosting yesterday.
(Alternately, tons of thanks to Sharon for driving today, and to Sharon and Charles and Matt for hosting yesterday.)

Because it is midnight and I didn’t get as much sleep last night as I wanted, photos (from yesterday and today) will have to wait until tomorrow to be posted. Check photos2 tomorrow evening (or subscribe to the RSS feed or follow the LJ account).

10 days to the move. Scary. Exciting.

Party

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People came over today for a pre-party with hot tubbing and games and food. Afterward, we all went to the farewell party Sharon was throwing for me.

Lots of cake (Mission Minis, a huge red velvet cake, a vanilla cake I baked), tasty booze (St. Germain!), rock band, pop song karaoke, and philosophical discussions about life and computing and the universe and razors.

I’m so incredibly lucky to have so many awesome friends. :) Thanks to everyone who came.
(Particular thanks to Sharon, Charles, and Matt for hosting.)

Photos will be posted at some point to photos2 when it’s not 3 AM. (If you follow the RSS feed or LJ syndicated account, you’ll get updated automatically.)

RSS Feeds

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So, as I posted in my last entry, photos2 now has an RSS feed.
jgrafton created a syndicated account for it, which you can find as alanv_photos.

I spent some time today fixing up the feed. It now properly displays build dates and published dates for galleries.

Zeke today suggested Yahoo pipes as a way to combine various feeds. As a result, there is now a combination feed for my journal and photos that will display the last 6 entries (from either).
http://pipes.yahoo.com/alanvdotorg/combined
The pipe has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to for easy access.

Yay RSS!

Fourth of July

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I had a Fourth of July. We ended up not watching fireworks (except for virtual ones on the projector that we quickly grew tired of), but it was an awesome time anyway.

In totally unrelated news, photos2 now has an RSS feed, in case you want to follow updates without having to go through the trouble of checking my main website (which already syndicates everything).

My Fourth of July in pictures: