fareedr

My message to the teabaggers.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:07:19 -0700

My message to the teabaggers.

I would like to get the MBTA’s attention by making...

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:02:25 -0700

I would like to get the MBTA’s attention by making #greenlinesucks a trending topic. Who’s in?

UP: Not Your Father's-Children's Story.

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:32:58 -0700

DUDE SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!

aaronwhite:

UP is children’s story about an introverted boy who meets an outgoing an adventurous young girl. The two grow up together and eventually marry. They share a love for kids; she works as a photographer, and he a balloonist, at the zoo. Their bond is carefree and loving.

When they try to conceive a child of their own, the wife is sadly diagnosed as infertile. Instead of adopting, they save their meager earnings for travel and adventure, however, life’s unexpected calamities prevents them from pocketing enough. When the now-greying husband finally manages to purchase vacation tickets to surprise his wife with, we learn that she has been diagnosed with a soon-to-be-fatal cancer, and hospitalized.

The widowed old man settles into a lonely routine. His few social interactions involve keeping businessman an contractors from taking his home and demolishing it to make way for the modern jungle around him. While protecting the pieces of home that remind him of his late-wife, he accidentally injures one of the contractors. Summoned to court, the old man is labeled a menace, and ordered to move into a retirement community.

Real UPlifting story, eh?

Thankfully these first 10 minutes end, and after you’ve smeared the tears off your face, the rest of the movie is a lighter and enjoyable, though not without more heartbreak & adult themes (murder, abandonment by a father, etc).

Two thumbs up.

Hello world!

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:21:35 -0700

Hello world!

And now the 419rs make it to FACEBOOK!! Using my name. Amazing.

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:45:45 -0700

And now the 419rs make it to FACEBOOK!! Using my name. Amazing.

The women of Iran are finding their voice.

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:45:51 -0700

The women of Iran are finding their voice.

Ay Iran is the unofficial national anthem of Iran. The Shah had...

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:41:31 -0700

Ay Iran is the unofficial national anthem of Iran. The Shah had his own (praising him, of course) and the Islamic Republic has another. However, Iranians everywhere learn and sing this song as a symbol of their pride and identity outside whatever opressive regime happens to control them at the time. The best analogue for us would be America the Beautiful - but imagine a Sarah Palin led coup had replaced The Star Spangled Banner with some song praising the coming rapture.

I will never forget how moving it was when a wedding I went to in Tehran broke out singing Ay Iran. It was a simple act, but to me, the outsider, it seemed like an extremely meaningful, though simple, act of political defiance.

I hear the protesters are in the streets singing it tonight, and my thoughts are with them.

Ay Iran.

Iran is pissed.

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:27:03 -0700

Iran is pissed.:

Our elections are broken, but when I see this, I try hard to remember not to take American democracy for granted.

The conversational style of Spam seems to be winning against...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:57:22 -0700

The conversational style of Spam seems to be winning against google.

Stupid Metro headline OTD (one day late, via Seth)

Thu, 28 May 2009 05:23:00 -0700

Stupid Metro headline OTD (one day late, via Seth)

I’ve been procrastinating through customization recently....

Fri, 22 May 2009 16:46:09 -0700

I’ve been procrastinating through customization recently. I’m particularly happy with my current top bar. I’ve removed the extraneous stuff (mobile me, for instance), and am now using 2 different system monitors to get the stats I really want.

The memory bar graph and cpu stats come from MenuMeters, and the temperature and fan speeds come from iStat menus. I just liked the look of the MenuMeters versions better, and only iStat has temperature monitoring (which is important if you use your laptop on your lap). I also managed to get two different Google Notifiers working, one of which I hacked up to use the Conduit Labs logo instead of the gmail defaults.

Weekend talk about Riedel inspired me to find a wine I’ve...

Tue, 19 May 2009 05:11:22 -0700

Weekend talk about Riedel inspired me to find a wine I’ve never had before and bust out the fancy crystal.

FML

Thu, 14 May 2009 09:09:05 -0700

FML

New loot in Loudcrowd. Awesome.

Fri, 08 May 2009 13:32:00 -0700

New loot in Loudcrowd. Awesome.

I am trying all the different ways to get from north station to...

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 05:51:00 -0700

I am trying all the different ways to get from north station to work. Today’s test involved an inbound green line and no walking. Feeling like canned fish is definitely a strike against this option.

People have no taste

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:15:38 -0700

Connecting to server...
You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: wassup.
Stranger: whats your favorite band
You: pavement.

Your conversational partner has disconnected.

WTF headline of the day from everyone’s favorite free...

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:26:03 -0700

WTF headline of the day from everyone’s favorite free paper, the Boston Metro.

(thanks to seth for bringing in the hard copy)

The Get Up Kids, Mass Pike This might be the world’s only...

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:47:04 -0700

The Get Up Kids, Mass Pike

This might be the world’s only song to speak of the pike in a positive light.

If they keep saying it then it must be true.

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:10:05 -0700

To set the record straight: I read Drudge because it is the most accurate predictor of what stories will exist in the New York Times and the New York Post the next morning.

Also, it’s good know what “they” are thinking - know thy enemies and all.

I love the guy I sit next to at work, but he’s got this bothersome habit of leaving the Drudge Report up on his monitor, which exposes me to my only daily dose of thoughtless taste-making conservative bullshit. I saw this “referendum” line yesterday and felt a troublesome twitch in my left temple, but it didn’t manifest as a full-fledged aneurysm until the meme made the jump from conservative quarters to the (ahem) hallowed pages of The Grey Lady.

Normally, I don’t cook beef, however, during a trip to...

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:05:44 -0700

Normally, I don’t cook beef, however, during a trip to Wilson’s farm in Lexington, I picked up a NY Strip Steak and decided to try out the ingenious cooking process suggested by America’s Test Kitchen. I served it with some haricots vert with cherry tomatoes from a Spanish cookbook I have, and a portabella mushroom, red wine pan sauce. The beef looks more cooked than it was because the iPhone camera stinks in low light.

A very successful meal, but the Rosenblum Syrah wasn’t as good as I remembered.