Doing My Little Part

2304 Bunker Hill Monster House

The San Mateo Highlands is one of the oldest and most comprehensive Eichler Communities in California. There are numerous coffee table books about this neighborhood and its developer Joseph Eichler, a pioneer of the Mid-Century Modern movement who parlayed his efforts into affordable California Modernism for the masses. The all-steel X100 house is here, the bemusing alpine Eichler, the rare two- and even three-story Eichlers.

Some of you may already know that on our block a neighbor is about to get the permits to built a 5,000 square foot Monster House on a parcel slightly smaller than 8k s.f. (link to the case). The current Eichler house there is 1,470 square feet. The proposed house is therefore over three times the size of the current house. (Click on the sketch to see more details.)

Initially, several people were concerned that a landslide that once occurred near the property would be a detriment to development of such scale, but it didn’t make a difference for the County Planning and Building Commission. If we were in San Mateo proper, likely it would. But as our attorney told us, if you want to build anything without regard to your neighbors and community, move to unincorporated San Mateo County.

Even though the owner is living in an Eichler himself, that’s not enough to stop him from creating a highly-visible eyesore: there’s no harmony at all in regards to architectural style and scale. The plans tell the tale of a bland, traditional house writ large.

We tried to fight it, even created a Google Group. And many people are outraged. The problem with the San Mateo Highlands is that it is unincorporated, so only San Mateo County rules apply. The single true restriction is you can’t build on more than 40% of the lot. He is building to 39.98%. There are no zoning overlays as the county doesn’t see the value in any kind of architectural preservation (in fact, it seems more hostile to the idea than anything). Even though the majority of residents want some sort of protection, this historic neighborhood is now prey for self-indulgent developers.

It appears that the current owner wants to maximize his investment and build as big a house on the property as he can to sell it at a premium to someone who has the capability to live in a bubble. We say this because the numbers bear out the fact that developing non-Eichlers here doesn’t reap significant financial rewards. I mean if you’re a Rothko fan are you going to hang your painting above a Louis XIV settée?

The permit is about to get approved, and as Marie is working from home and Nina is a light sleeper, we need a different solution at least until the house is built. Very reluctantly we are looking for a sublet for a year (great, rent and a mortgage!), ideally somewhere in San Mateo County.

Any other ideas greatly appreciated too.

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Sticky Stickers off my Fruity Fruit

The other day I was at Safeway which is trying to go upscale after watching Whole Foods successfully take your whole paycheck. Lots of money there.

Consumers are willing to pay premiums that run 30% and more, especially for perishable items such as produce.

What frustrates me endlessly are the stickers on our fruit. The worst I came across you see in the photo to the left. Every apricot has a sticker that is almost as big as the fruit itself and if you look closely, some have two stickers.

Now let me count the reasons why this is bad:

1. Unnecessary production cost: sticker, design, putting them on the fruit
2. I have to peel them off: there is no grab an apple and bite into it. No, now you need to inspect your fruit, on the dark side of the peach there could be one hiding.
3. No easy composting, need to take the sticker off, even if it is on an orange peel. Or if people are careless, it goes into the compost.
4. Once I peel the sticker off, I have to walk to the garbage can to throw it out.
5. Who knows how much glue is staying on the fruit.

The sad truth is, it works. I am convinced that there have been many tests and we consumers are ill-informed enough to fall for the shiny sticker.

I think it is an example of how free-market capitalism is not working for the benefit of the common folk, and needs to, dare I say, be regulated.

It is sad, so sad. There are even a bunch of Facebook Groups dedicated to get rid of them. I joined the one with the most members.

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Best Breakfast Time Ever

My favorite weekend morning routine is: getting up really early while the best wife of all is still sleeping, filling a thermos with Earl Grey tea, cutting some fruit, and grabbing Nina as soon as she wakes up to drive the 10 minutes over the hill to Half Moon Bay, buy fresh Blueberry bagels at Safeway and park the car at Pilarcitos Avenue.

We walk over a small wooden bridge to the beach, where a little bench is already waiting for us. It is our sanctuary. The sound of the waves, the sun, the fresh air, some food and tea, all of that just makes us happy.

Sometimes our friends Vikram and Nikhil join us too. If you are in the ‘hood, please swing by, have a bagel, a cup of tea, and a bear hug.

Highly recommended. If you can’t swing by, go out and find your own little sanctuary.

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Level 42

42

Two days ago I finally reached the ultimate geek age symbolizing the Answer to The Ultimate Question Of Life, the Universe and Everything. Douglas Adams is a hero of mine.
As a kid nine o’clock was my bedtime. The great thing was that I had a little radio and Monday and Tuesday night there were radio plays and I would lay in my warm bed and listen to them.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy came alive in my dark room more than anything else. I still smile just thinking about these late nights.
The best wife of all organized a babysitter and whisked me away to a great night out.

The sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge to the left was taken from the Bank of America building. Life is good.

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Equality is like gravity …

… we need it to stand on this earth.
This is one of the most powerful YouTube clips ever. Even before Nina came into my world I longed for more strong women, actually I married one

For example in my computer science class it would have been great to have parity. We were actually happy to have 20% women, that was better than most of the other engineer classes.I checked and they now have Girl’s Day in Germany where they bring young women to technical universities to show them how much fun science and technology can be, to take away their fear.
On the other hand there should also be parity in occupations like nursing. The thing is, that often such jobs don’t pay enough to feed a family. If you have read Joe Quirk’s very funny book about Sperms and Eggs you get a science perspective on the differences.If I am not mistaken teaching used to be the third highest ranked profession after university professor and medical doctor. This was in Germany, where teachers still are respected more than here in the US. Still the status went down in proportion to the rise of the percentage of female teachers, which is now over 50%. This is just very sad and we have a lot of work ahead of us to turn the tide.
[via Christina Wodtke]

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My Sister the Artist goes back …

She is gone again back to Sydney for now and it makes me sad. My lovely sister Sabina was in the Bay Area for just about three months and we didn’t see each other often enough. She came a couple of times to help out with Nina and we are very greatful for that. She also joined us for the Christening of Nina in Chicago and now she and her husband Peter are on the plane going back to Sydney.

She is so talented and you can see it in the photos she shot while in San Francisco. (Nina is hidden in one of them too.)

In addition she found time to make a sculpture too. I really love it. She just put these pages up the other day. Would have loved to help her create a presence out here on the net.

She does amazing stuff, but doesn’t like to be called what she is: An Artist (Whatever that means anyway.)

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SDN Day and TechEd here I come :-)

Well I am organizing the SDN Day it would be tough to then not go I am actually looking forward to it, am a bit nervous about the many great new things we are introducing. Whish me luck.

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Two gifts for Nina: Roots and Wings

Danah Boyd wrote:

A few weeks ago, a father told me that when he became a parent, his father reminded him that parents must give their children two things: roots and wings. Give them roots to keep them grounded through tough times. Give them wings to soar above everything, explore new worlds and fly farther than we ever did.

I think that this is important for most parents to remember….

I love my parents for having given me both.

Hey Nina, I will try my best.

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I want my money back: Rolling Blackouts were fabricated!

So Ken Lay and Skilling are foun guilty, but what about all the other energy companies who were involved in faking blackouts 6 years ago? At that time forced California into long term high price contracts (as far as I know). I have paid and am paying for that right now and I want my money back.
Amy Goodman has an amazing Democracy Now segment about the whole thing. It is disgusting:
Excerpts from the transcript:

Enron employee asking a worker at a power plant in Las Vegas to take the plant offline. That same day energy supplies were so tight, Northern California experienced a stage three power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit as many as two million consumers
The same calls were made by Duke Power to San Diego Gas and Electric. We had a whole gang, Reliant, Dynergy, El Paso, Duke, Entergy. These guys were all working in coordination — Public Service of New Mexico — and they were playing games with the power market. They were running it like a fixed casino. And yet only one company went down and only two guys, and they weren’t even allowed to bring up the California power markets in the trial, so that basically, the Bush Justice Department did its very, very best to keep the real crimes and the whole mob out of the courtroom, because it would have brought it right back, of course, to the Bush administration itself.
Gray Davis had demanded that after Enron got and their buddies got caught nicking the state for $9 billion-plus, he did the obvious thing, he demanded that the money be returned.
Right after that, the recall drive starts against Gray Davis, who is demanding that the money be returned. Schwarzenegger becomes — the Terminator becomes the Governator, and literally within days, the Lay plan from the Peninsula Hotel goes right into effect, and Schwarzenegger just starts signing off with every one of these power companies to give dimes on the dollar, so that the public in California just never got its money back, just got virtually nothing.
So Lay appoints his own regulators, and he did this before in Texas, when George, when George Bush was Governor of Texas, when George Bush says he didn’t know Ken Lay, and I’ve got a letter in Armed Madhouse showing a note from Ken Lay saying, “Here’s the guy I want to be my regulator, the cop that’s supposed to be watching me,” and sure enough, Governor George Bush appoints Ken Lay’s personal cop.
No, that era is beginning. Okay, they got rid of the guy who kicked it off. They had to. He went too far. But the whole gang is still operating. That’s one of the big evils.
Yeah. I mean, basically the co-conspirators, the rest of the mob, was breaking out champagne yesterday, because they said, “We’re off the hook.” This should have been the beginning of new indictments, and like I say, the only new indictment are the guys that went after Enron, the law firm that sued Enron for its shenanigans. Milberg Weiss was put up. It was clearly political prosecution to say “We’re going to go after the guys who went after Enron,” and yet you heard the list. You had the law firm Vinson & Elkins, you had Arthur Andersen, you had a whole crew of characters who got off scot-free here.
And third — this is the big one — the law under Franklin Roosevelt said you cannot make political donations if you’re a big power company.
And in 2005, Bush made it official by repealing the F.D.R. Public Utility Holding Company Act, which barred these contributions by power companies to politicians.
Phil Graham was the one who carried legislation that allowed Enron to do a lot of the things it did and avoid federal oversight at the same time that his wife, Wendy, was on Enron’s board.
Well, what you have here is economic political gangsterism, which has now seized control of the government.
His great gift is really decriminalization of price gouging, of monopoly abuse, of economic abuse. These guys still have California by the light bulbs, and as deregulation disease is spreading across the nation, still 24 states have deregulated their power markets.
what we’ve done is we’ve decriminalized the rip-off of the consumer.
But if I can just add one other thing, this game isn’t over yet. There’s certain to be an appeal, and there’s a possibility of an overturn here, because of the judge’s jury instructions, which were fairly open-ended and were similar to the instructions given in the Arthur Andersen trial, which was then overturned at the Supreme Court, so while I’m pleased –
Of course the California Legislature that wrote these bad laws that enabled the price gouching is to blame too. Still, I can’t believe not more people are outraged and call for justice. Not that I had a high opinion of democracy here, but haven’t we been super manipulated into electing Arnold? Of course it wasn’t me, I can’t vote here.

Bottom line is they ripped us off and they are not giving the money back, Enron is gone, but the mechanisms are still in place and ready to squeeze us again, and again, and again. Instead of going after the gang they indicted the law firm that went after Arthur Anderson and Co. See Greg Palast:

Furthermore, to protect our President’s boardroom buddies from any further discomforts, the Bush Justice Department, just days ago, indicted Milberg, Weiss, the law firm that nailed Enron’s finance industry partners-in-crime. The timing of the bust of this, the top corporation-battling law firm, smacks of political prosecution — and a signal to Big Business that it’s business as usual.

When do we wake up? Oh and this proofs that business is like fire. Controlled it keeps you warm and heats your food, uncontrolled it burns down your house.

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Friends don’t let Friends use Paxil

Finally GlaxoSmithKline warns Paxil may raise suicide risk. What an unbelievable twist: Your life goes into the rough and you reach out to Paxil to get back to calmer waters, where you can sort it all out, but instead of bringing you into safty, Paxil pushes you over board. 

Cecily Bostock committed suicide after only two weeks of using Paxil. She was Shawn’s childhood girlfriend. They went to high school and university together. She was a total feeler and was able to express that in her art. Her paintings could reached out and touch you very deeply. Being the feeler she was the crazy life of ours just overwhelmed her once in a while. She took the pills to calm her down and at the end they did more than we like.

I am no expert in depression and I know sometimes you sit in such a dark hole that you think you only can get out from using medications. Our excellent acupuncture Dr. Chen in San Francisco is very adamant against using antidepressants and especially Paxil. He tries to help many of his patients to get off these antidepressants and it is very hard.

It isn’t something that is discussed very openly, so it is possible that one of my friends is even using it. Let me know, let’s talk about it, find a better way together. After all that’s what friends are for: Friends don’t let friends use Paxil.

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