Linkstew

I got yet another Jury Summons today, after getting off scott free with the Kern Summons from June (I wasn't called).

Actually, it's worse than that:

I got a summons to serve in Oakland on December 4th, and a second summons to serve in Hayward on December 2nd. Literally two envelopes, containing two separate Alameda County Jury Summons. How ridiculous is it that I got my fifth and sixth jury summons in two and a half years (between two different counties) on the same day?

Man, Hayward! Hayward is sufficiently far away from Berkeley that I had to look it up on a map to see exactly where it was! It's like 20 miles from my apartment!

I'm trying to figure out how I can use each one to get out of the other, because after 10 weeks of perfect attendance, I'll be damned if I'm going to let jury duty sabotage that one day (or three days, depending on which summons I listen to) before my last day of classes at Berkeley.

And to top it off, I also found a notice that my rent is going up $30 next month taped to my door today. Bah.

Hopefully your Friday was better than mine.

The first time I ate at Sufficient Grounds was on March 24, 2001. Now before you think I'm totally insane, let me clarify that I don't remember that date because it was the first day I ate at Sufficient Grounds --Rather, I remember the date because it was the day that Mac OS X was released. Since I was introduced to them on that day, I've eaten there so often that one of the cashier's said hi to me when I ran into him at the bank one day.

Sure, they're a little more expensive than most of the other cafes around, but that doesn't make me love them any less. Here are the top five reasons I like the place:

1. Honestly, how could I not like a place with such a humble name? Contrast this with Royal Grounds, which despite being on the same block I live on, is not only my least favorite cafe in all of Berkeley because of its awful coffee, but also because of its arrogant name.
2. Not only do they bake their own bread, but their focaccia is killer.
3. It's in a pretty prime location for people watching.
4. Not only did they win the Iced Mocha Monday taste test, but they're also my favorite place for an iced mocha.
5. They're across the walkway from Yogurt Park (and if you don't know why this is a good thing, I'm not going to tell you).

I'm sure going to miss that place when I'm gone.

Here are entries that I was going to write in the last week, but were aborted for one reason or another:

• Mention that any of Chimay's beers have surpassed my previous favorite beer, but in particular, the Chimay Blue (aka Chimay Grande Réserve) is my new favorite. It's a nice dark Belgian Ale with a smooth texture and complex flavor, and it's easy to drink despite its 9% ABV. Of course, it's a little too expensive to drink very regularly, but what do you expect from something brewed by Belgian Monks? It's still damn good, though.
• A discussion of Berkeley's proposed law on requiring local businesses to brew only Fair Trade coffee, and attempting to draw out a corollary on how this could potentially apply to beer. Aborted because I couldn't make said corollary into a joke that made sense.
• I was going to comment that with Star Trek X apparently being "A Generation's Final Journey," that means we won't be getting a Star Trek movie with Q. Then I was going to make a joke that if it meant we had to wait until Star Trek Q for Q's movie, then maybe it was alright, because the thought of that many Star Trek movies makes me ill. The joke died, however, when I rememembered that there is no Roman Numeral Q. D'oh.
• Discussion of the disturbing discovery that They Might Be Giants songs are 18.71% percent of my music 3875 song music library (though only 12.73% of the duration of my library). NIN was a distant 2nd, making up a mere 3.4% of my songs. Perhaps more disturbingly, though, is that different versions of a mere 4 TMBG songs (Istanbul, Particle Man, They Might Be Giants, and Birdhouse In Your Soul) make up 1% of my entire music collection! What's even worse about this is that there's only one version of Istanbul, Particle Man, and They Might Be Giants I really like, but I keep the rest around because I don't want to delete a song out of the middle of a bootleg or other collection. At least I listen to at least half the variants of Birdhouse that I have. Anyway, the point is that if you had any doubt that I'm a TMBG fanatic, you now have incontrovertible evidence.
• Yesterday's iPod software update made me a very happy camper, because now my iPod will update my iTunes library with updated Play Counts and Last Played times, so my iPod listening habits can be taken into consideration when creating smart playlists.
• TMBG is going to be on Conan O'Brien again on Wednesday, August 14th. By which I mean the will actually air on the 14th, as in the one that starts 30 minutes after the 13th ends. Hopefully they don't play Robot Parade like they did last time. Four of Two would be a much more reasonable choice, I think.
• While reading alt.music.tmbg last night, I came across a link to this interview, wherein John Flansburgh and John Linnell interview each other. It's very amusing and very revealing, I think. They talk about everything from other's perceptions of their music to their high school science teacher to emotion killing bacteria.
• The guy who cuts my hair (which happened today) looks totally like Tom Cavanagh (Who plays Ed on the TV show Ed).
• And finally, if I weren't completely busy with work, I'd totally be at TMBG's 20th anniversay concert next week in Central Park. ::sigh::

So now that you know what I would have written about, aren't you glad I didn't write about it at length?

My bank account is so manic depressive. And I think it suffers from seasonal affective disorder, too.

This isn't helped by the fact that my roommate lost his checkbook and so paid rent last month in fifties... Which just means I haven't deposited it yet, because I don't want to use the ATM to deposit that much cash.

And worse, he paid this month's rent in twenties, and of course, Berkeley rent being what it is... Damn my wallet is fat now.

Um... Forget I said that. Please don't mug me.

"What does he get if he gets them all right?"
"An iced mocha."
-- two of my co-workers

And with that began the "Iced Mocha tour of Berkeley" in the office today. Six of us went forth and each acquired an Iced Mochas from a local coffee house. This endeaver was inspired by the fact that R., our resident Iced Mocha expert, was leaving for Grad School at the end of the week.

Iced Mocha expert? Yeah, you see, R. averages about three Iced Mochas a day, and even owns iced-mocha.net. When he travels, he always comes back with a report about the availability of Iced Mochas. Really, R. and Iced Mocha are pretty much synonymous.

So the purpose of the Iced Mocha tour was actually two-fold. First, it was an attempt to spread around some of R.'s knowledge of local coffee shops in general, and Iced Mochas in particular. And Second, it was an opportunity to see how well R. knows his Iced Mochas in a little blind taste test.

So we gathered our Iced Mochas, returned to the office, poured each Iced Mocha into an anonymous cup, and let R. try his mouth at the cups. R., unfortunately, only went 1/2 for 6. The Iced Mochas were:

A. International House
B. Strada
C. Coffee Source
D. Wall Berlin
E. Sufficient Grounds
G. Intermezzo (R. picked the first five, and this last one was chosen as a "mystery mocha" to stump the expert)

It's important to note that random anomalies frequently occur with coffee, and sometimes you just get a bad mocha. R. most frequently gets his Iced Mochas from Strada, Coffee Source, and Wall Berlin, and amazingly, our samples from both Strada and Coffee Source were sufficiently bad to throw off R.'s taste buds. (I drink Iced Mochas pretty regularly, and I agree that they were both ... abnormal)

This, unfortunately, totally threw off R.'s ability to pidgeonhole which mocha was which, because he couldn't identify the mochas he drinks most often. So in the end, the only mocha he (half) identified was the Mystery Mocha, though he guessed that it was from Espresso Experience rather than Intermezzo. R.'s first, and pretty much only, comment on that Intermezzo Mocha before declaring it "bad" was "Ilch!"

In the end, the assembled tasted ranked our Iced Mochas in the following order:

1. Sufficient Grounds - This is one of my favorites even on a normal day, but today's sample was unusually milky and sweet, which made for an especially pleasing experience for all the non-regular mocha drinkers in the office.
2. Wall Berlin - They tend towards sweeter, but very strong, Mochas. Todays was actually a little less strong than usual, which I didn't personally mind.
3. International House - I'd never had an Iced Mocha from here, but it was pretty typical for what I expect from an Iced Mocha.
4. Coffee Source/Strada - Once again, I note that these were both "bad blends," and should not be discounted just based on this one bad experience.
5. Intermezzo - Christo this one was bad. Ilch indeed. But Intermezzo is more of a salad/sandwich place than a coffee house, so I can't complain too much.

For reference, my favorite three Mochas on a normal day are Sufficient Grounds, Coffee Source, and Wall Berlin. I don't get up to Strada very often to drink there enough to develop a taste for it. From todays taste tests, though, I realized that I actually like my Iced Mochas slightly watered down (or less strong, if you prefer looking at it that way), but definitely Iced. Cold cold cold is a must.

Lessons learned? If we do this again, we should get two samples from each coffee shop, remove the ice and add it back right before tasting (to keep them from getting watered down until the samples are poured), and mix vigourously before the taste tests begin.

The final verdict on the Iced Mocha Tour?

"I think drinking iced mochas like this is like drinking several different kinds of hard liquor."
-- R., on "that funny feeling in our stomachs"

Oh, and here are a couple pictures.

Is it just me, or does having pickles and cucumbers on the same sandwich somehow strike you as wrong?

And I finally found a solution to my little No Mayonnaise/Double Mustard -- "No mayonnaise, and mustard on the side, please." Though I actually found that I liked todays Vegetarian sandwich from Coffee Source (Cucumbers and Pickles, Avocado, Spinich, Lettuce, Onions, etc) without any condiments.

I woke up at 6:30 am this morning, and I was at work by 6:45. I could write a great big long list of everything I did today, but suffice it to say that I got home at 2 am.

19 hours. Seriously.

And I didn't really have any breaks, either. I ate my meals while I was walking around the dorms answering questions people had.

Yes, I'm exhausted. And I have to do it again tomorrow.

After I got my Jury Summons, I got out of it by claiming not to be a resident of Alameda county.

A few weeks later, my ex-roommate Keith got a Jury Summons, but he had moved out and was living in Poway, and now that I think about it, I'm not sure that I told him about that. Hehe, hi Keith! I've been busy this last month, sorry!

Anyway, today my other ex-roommate Mike (who is not the same as my current roommate Michael) got a Jury Summons, and he is also going to get out of it by not living in Alameda county anymore.

I wonder when they're going to figure out that sending Jury Summons to this address is futile?

I left my office and walked down Bancroft, on my way to see Rush Hour 2 with my roommate. "Hopefully Spud Brothers will reopen before school starts," I mused. "I'd really like a potato." But when I passed Spud Brothers, a sign in the window caught my eye.

"Asuka's Donburi House Coming (very) Soon"

Oh, that's not right! It would seem that Spud Brothers is gone, leaving behind countless fans of their work. Students will return in a week or two, and when they go to get a potato, they won't find the store they were hoping for. And worse, thousands of freshman will be deprived of the spud brothers part of the Berkeley Experience.

Today I got an official jury summons... For August 2nd. What a terrible choice of days. On that day, two of my new programmers are supposed to show up and I'm supposed to start training them. So uh, I'll just... Improvise, or something.

I'm going to go in, pray they don't like me, and then get out. Otherwise things are going to get rather complicated, and I'll probably go insane.

I couldn't think of a worse day in the next month for this to fall on.

Oh, wait, yeah I can. August 20th would definitely be worse.

But not just any potato -- A potato from Spud Brothers. Be it their Vegetarian Chili Deluxe, or their Berkeley's Best (Pesto and Mozarella), or even their Mushroom Melt. I just have a craving. It's left all other food looking unappetizing. At this very moment, I'm staring at a perfectly good sandwich from Coffee Source, but I haven't taken a bite. The bread is already getting a little stale from the air. It's never done anything to me to deserve this kind of rejection, but reject it I do. I'll eventually give in, and take a tentative bite... But it won't be the same.

Why don't I just go get a potato? Because they've been "renovating" since the day finals finished. And to make matters worse, I used to eat at Spud Brothers two or three times a week, so it's put a real cramp on my lunch rotation.

And why don't I make my own potato? Because when I do, I never get motivated enough to do all that fancy stuff, and instead toss in some butter and maybe some mozarella. And why don't I go to Smart Alec's or some other place which sells potatoes? Because, they never get it quite right. Somehow, Spud Brothers always gives me a perfect spud.

All I want is a brotherly spud.

Hey, if I move the office AirPort just so, I can get wireless net in, and at the tables in front of, the cafe downstairs. Wow, that was a productive way to spend an hour -- but now I can work from in front of the cafe and write up summaries of ResNet for work while taking advantage of this beautiful Berkeley day.

Of course, I've also got the option of heading over to Wall Berlin and taking advantage of their Surf and Sip participation -- but this is closer, and freer.

Disadvantage of my current location? Smoke. Blech.