Pepsi Ripoff Project

Wow, things I miss by not watching much network TV. This showed up during "Lost" on ABC last night. Pepsi's agency has got some splainin' to do:

Pepsi commercial - January 2010

Sour "Hibi No Neiro" - July 2009

Laura Thatcher Out of Berkeley

Remember when recreational rioters were driving over the Bay Bridge to screw up Oakland residents' livelihood? Now we have douchebags from one of the finer SoCal communities rioting on the UC Berkeley campus.

Six non-students, Julia Litmancleper, 20, of San Francisco; John Friesen, 25, of Fullerton (Orange County); Donnell Allen, 41, of San Francisco, David Morse, 41, of Oakland; Laura Thatcher, 21, of Rolling Hills Estates (Los Angeles County) and James Carwil, 31, Brooklyn, N.Y., were arrested on the same charges.

(sfgate.com)

You're *so* grounded Laura; go back to Rolling Hills Estates. After your jail sentence.

Unfortunate brands

... as seen in the Craigslist "Cars for Sale" section:

Volkswagon
Porsha
Alpha Romero
Datson
Mercedez

Valvo
Camero
Camery

Lexis

Infinity
Carmen Ghia

Karma Ghia

Cadalac

Coupe Devil

Manuel Transmission

Redio
Tacometer

Head Casket

Why they won't let me work in Japan anymore

(My US marketing failures here)

"Seibu, Say Me"
"Hankyu very much"

Oakland Tech students robbed at gunpoint. In class.

Oh, and AC Transit needs some "No Food, No Drinks, No Guns" signage. How frustrating.

Two men in their early 20s entered a classroom at Oakland Technical High School shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday and robbed three students at gunpoint, according to police .... The robbers had taken an AC Transit bus to the North Oakland high school that morning, reportedly harassing some of the students on the way.

This logo is rather unfortunate

Two versions of the logo seen on their site. Transition in progress following an awkward meeting, no doubt.

Nia Sykes Out of Oakland

You madam, are an idiot. Protest anywhere you like, but please riot in your own little room.

Protesters smashed the storefronts of McDonald's as well as stores called Creative African Braids and Oakland Yoon's Pharmacy. Cars along 14th Street were smashed, and some were set ablaze.

A woman walked out of Creative African Braids holding a baby in her arms.

"This is our business," she shouted. "This is our shop. This is what you call a protest?"

Nia Sykes, 24, of San Francisco, a protester who was with the group, said, "I feel like the night is going great. I feel like Oakland should make some noise. This is how we need to fight back.
...
Sykes had little sympathy for the owner of Creative African Braids.

"She should be glad she just lost her business and not her life," Sykes said.

(sfgate.com)

Added 1/9/2008: SF Chronicle has published Nia Sykes' response to the article, which has since been syndicated worldwide.

"I do not advocate violence"

Editor - Regarding "Protests over BART shooting turn violent" (Jan. 8): I was dismayed to see that I was quoted grossly out of context. I spoke to the reporter for several minutes and they used only portions from the interview to make it seem as if I was condoning violence, which is not at all the case.

I was a part of the peaceful rally that began at 3 p.m. at the Fruitvale BART Station, where Oscar Grant was murdered. I said that the peaceful protest was "great"- not the destruction of property! Some of us continued to downtown Oakland, but I was not a part of the faction of protesters that became violent. I do not advocate violence at all, from police or the protesters, nor did I have any part of it. In fact, when I saw people vandalizing property, I moved to another block, where I was interviewed by the reporter.

I only became aware of the woman whose shop was damaged after the reporter informed me of it. I am sorry that her shop as well as other individuals' and businesses were vandalized.

I am saddened too, that The Chronicle chose to make this article solely about race. The protests were about the execution-style shooting of an unarmed man by the BART police. The protesters who came were of all races: black, white, Asian and Latino.

NIA SYKES
San Francisco

(sfgate.com)

Amtrak and Horizon Air merge, sues Obama

Stupid Economy

The restaurant slowdown has claimed one of my local favorites. Local businesses are struggling, and this news to me is a big reminder to support the good ones. I hope the folks at Jojo will reopen in better times.

For Curt Clingman of Jojo, a neighborhood French restaurant in Oakland that just celebrated its ninth year in business, it's the lack of customer traffic that's killing him. When they do come in, diners tend to share a couple of starters instead of buying full meals.

"The depth and length of this economic downturn has been the worst I have ever lived through," said the chef, who owns the bistro with his wife, Mary Jo Thoresen, a pastry chef.

Clingman said that he started feeling the pain early this year, when his usual clientele began to thin out.

"We thought we could weather it," he said. "But things got nothing but worse."

During the next few months Clingman and Thoresen tried to retool the business, eventually scaling down to two dishwashers, two servers and a part-time sous chef.

"Where do you go from here?" he asked. "To persevere was becoming too reckless."

The couple has decided to shutter the place Jan. 1. They have already made a deal to sell most of the restaurant's assets and feel fortunate to have found a buyer.

(via Hunter's fine local economic stimulus plan)

1987 Called.

They want their stock market crash back.

That lady is mad at me.

(Via bunch of MoveOn users)

Vote No on CA Prop 8

It's easy to confuse which vote means what. A "no" vote means "don't eliminate marriage from anyone." Keep it, uh, straight.

390,000 lbs of CO2!

Whooops. If you see me walking around the house in a down jacket this winter, now you know why. (Per assumptions here.)

Domo-kun at Target

Whoa. つーか、ワオ。

Is that a flux capacitor you're holding?

Them DeLorean people sure do have interesting tastes. (Nothing NSFW in this eBay auction, really. Just a bit nutty on many levels.)

RNC Wrap-Up

...and my first Hulu.com embed.

Choose Your Tax Proposal

(via FF @shellen)

Milpitas Moments

Dearest People of Milpitas,

The stellar reputation for East Asian cuisine in your fine city is well deserved; We truly enjoyed the Chinese dinner on our drive back from Monterey.

The parking skills/manners of the local residents, however, leave much to be desired:

(Something to beware on my next trip to the US outpost of Pepper Lunch.)

(Discount ~ All-C) + Intercontinental Air Service = FAIL

Wow, they've all gone kaput while I wasn't looking. It's really too bad as the customer experience was said to be pretty satisfying all around.

MaxJet
EOS
Oasis Hong Kong

Ear Cleaning Parlors

Adding to the list of things you get in a parlor: Ear Cleaning.

Quick, where's my hoarding instinct?

Rice rationing at Costco! Aieeeee!

Great Moments in Corporate Missions

Old and Busted: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
New Hotness: Everything should taste like bacon.

What? WHAT?!

Fifth eatery's diners, workers robbed in two weeks

Four robbers invaded Milano Restaurant on Grand Avenue on Sunday night, taking cash and valuables at gunpoint from diners and employees in the city's fifth takeover-style robbery of restaurants in two weeks and the second since Friday.

In Baghdad, Drivers Shoot *You*

Action-packed. Pace picks up at around 1:30, driving in opposing lanes.

I Kiss You My Business

This local listings entry sounds not at all like it was written in a Romanian boiler room.

D & B Auto Brokers has done some good work of fast lane cars dealer and foreign and domestic cars dealers in our Redwood City neighbohood.D & B Auto Brokers has specialities in wholesale price car dealer and used and new car dealers. In summary, I refer you D & B Auto Brokers because I found it well connected and worth your loyalty.

Flying the Friendly Skies

Note to self: VS or BA to Heathrow.

The alleged plan was to target a series of planes leaving from Heathrow Airport for North America. Police say they found a list of flights on a memory stick belonging to Mr Ali following his arrest. The memory stick allegedly listed scheduled flights from three carriers - America Airlines, United Airlines and Air Canada:

* 1415 UA931 LHR-SAN FRANCISCO (United Airlines)
* 1500 AC849 LHR-TORONTO (Air Canada)
* 1515 AC865 LHR-MONTREAL (Air Canada)
* 1540 UA959 LHR-CHICAGO (United)
* 1620 UA925 LHR-WASHINGTON
* 1635 AA131 LHR-NEW YORK (American Airlines)
* 1650 AA91 LHR-CHICAGO (American)

80! 90! 100 percent off!

The world financial market appears to have become a Guitar Center radio commercial.
"We're having our BIGGEST SALE EVER!"
"Alitalia! 80% off!""
"Bear Stearns! 93% off!"

Monsterously Bad Branding

This just in via FriendFeed comment stream: Monster Park was supposed to make us think of that overpriced heavy-gauge audio cables company, not the job site!

Stag. Party.

Tokyo > (New York + Paris)

3 months after publication, NYT and Newsweek pick up on the multitude of Le Guide Michelin stars being doled out in Tokyo.

Many prominent figures of the Tokyo food world, however, are saying to Michelin, in effect, thanks for all the attention (which we deserve), but you still do not know us or our cuisine.

... hmm, reminiscent of when a yakiniku place ended up atop the Zagat Survey for that fine city.

McD + KFC = MCK

In other words, 麥當奴 + 肯德基 = 麥肯基

From the US West Coast, of course. I'm going to get me a franchise.

Taxpayer Rides, DUB Edition

I'm not sayin' that a broad-daylight carjacking in a decent neighborhood is any less shocking, or more justified.

But I do, um, understand it a bit better now. Check out dem wheels!

Next Stop, Preschools!

Big middle-class break at Stanford, following similar announcements at Harvard and Yale.

Cal and others need help. And, maybe sometime after that, all those Montessori schools.

East Bay Embarassment on I-880

You've got to be f-ing kidding me.

When Two Worlds Collide!

Whoa. This really is one of the oddest, wackiest photo shoots I'd ever seen done at the 'Plex. Very Zoolander.

It's all about that work-fashion balance.

iTunes U

My friend Eli pointed me to iTunes U. Most excellent source for in-flight video programming!

Lawsuits Are Forever

Great tip from our friend Dr. Sanj on the $300 million DeBeers class action site. Be sure to visit it if you bought diamond jewelry between 1994 (!) and 2006. Deadline to file is 5/19/2008.

Full story here.

M5 going V1

Note to self: No fast cars for the kids. Maybe a Mercury Topaz instead.

Flower Duet Redux

I should stop skipping commercials. No wonder the songtitle site updates are slow.

British Airways, 1989


Silverjet, 2007

Bzzzzzzt!

How is it possible that I missed out on this product release?!

WTF? This makes me angry.

Boy shot while taking lessons at Piedmont Piano Company.

(01-10) 21:27 PST Oakland -- A 10-year-old boy taking a piano lesson at a North Oakland studio was shot and critically injured today by a stray bullet when a robber opened fire at a gas station across the street, authorities said.

The boy, whose name was not released, was in critical and unstable condition and undergoing surgery tonight at Children's Hospital Oakland.

He was hit in the abdomen by at least one of three bullets fired at about 4:30 p.m. by a man who was robbing a the Chevron gas station at Piedmont and Pleasant Valley avenues, police said.

I love the city but Ron Dellum's mayorship is a disaster. Seriously.

Cooking with NYT

Great tips on taming that 875,000 BTU Viking stove.

Bad News for Telecommuters

Really neat findings on prediction markets.

Sigh.

I'm dead. That sucks, at least for me and my family and friends. But all the tears in the world aren't going to bring me back, so I would prefer that people remember the good things about me rather than mourning my loss. (If it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions.)

Rails to Trail^H^H^H^H^H Parks

Say, are we keeping the original Bay Bridge structure for something really cool like this?

51st & Shattuck! Mid-day!

Hey Mayor Dellums, now can we please get those police officers hired?

State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata was carjacked at gunpoint from his state car in North Oakland Saturday.

Perata, 62, of Oakland was unharmed in the incident, which happened at about 1:45 p.m. as he was stopped in his state-leased red 2006 Dodge Charger at a red light at 51st Street and Shattuck Avenue.

Santa's Korean Helpers

It's 10:30pm Christmas Eve. 5 hours earlier, you made a tactical culinary error by using the last 4 cans of chicken broth for a risotto, when they were actually earmarked for the big osso buco dish tomorrow. What do you do?

You head on over to the best freakin' 24/365 supermarket in the Bay Area, that's what you do.

And then, you see the locked fine spirits cabinet and think: Last minute presents!

Manga Society

A company that I'm working with recently launched a pretty neat mini-blogging/social bookmarking service and I'm struck at the number of illustrations & doodles being created:



Reminds me of the whole episode with the Forza craftspeople; seems quite appropriate for the country that invented manga.

Dining in Coach

So we're eating at our neighborhood Thai lunch spot today, and suddenly I suffer a violent flashback.

I've seen this tablecloth pattern before, hmm...



EGADS! It's ECONOMY CLASS!

Google is Evil

Don't you believe otherwise; it is indeed The Beast.

Hotswap.com Sucks. Oh yes they do.

I don't care if their business seems ill-conceived and prone to failure; that's their problem.

But sending out emails posing as legitimate buyers and wasting sellers' time -- that's just wrong, folks.

Sigh.

Our city could do so much better than this...

Crime forces Subway in Oakland to close
Owner gives up after third heist in a month
By Cecily Burt, STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 09/30/2007 02:39:37 AM PDT

OAKLAND — Subway, one of the few signs of life in the Mandela Gateway retail strip on Seventh Street, was closed indefinitely Friday after being robbed for the third time in a month.

"This is the third time in 30 days, each time people with guns in broad daylight ... 11 a.m., 2 p.m., we're not talking 8 or 9 at night.

Call now and ask for a no-cost refi!

A little-reported phenomenon amidst the subprime breakdown... kids memorizing the TV commercial pitch! Maybe another good signal for calling the market top.

Green Bombs

So, it's like... the Prius.

General Alexander Rukshin, Russia’s armed forces deputy chief of staff, said, that it is known as a vacuum bomb and it uses a fuel-air explosive and can create overpressures equal to an atomic bomb.

”It is environmentally friendly, compared to a nuclear bomb, and it will enable us to ensure national security and at the same time stand up to international terrorism in any part of the globe and in any situation,” he said.

Hey, how 'bout some pills instead?

Money != Happiness (NYT)
Children != Happiness (Salon/NPR)

O. M. F. G.

Can we have this at Pelican Bay? Guantanamo? Please?


The prison actually has an amazingly impressive repertoire.

More exploding batteries

Note to self: Beware those cheap replacement batteries on eBay...

SHANGHAI, July 6 — China made new public displays on Friday of its efforts to crack down on defective products, sentencing a former top drug safety official to death and disclosing an investigation into cellphone batteries after one reportedly exploded, killing a man when it pierced his heart.

Until about 2001, nearly all lithium-ion batteries for notebook computers, video camcorders and cellphones, were produced in Japan, according to industry analysts. But in the last few years, dozens of independent Chinese lithium ion battery makers have begun production — often making counterfeit batteries. These third-party producers often sell lithium batteries for one-third or one-fourth the cost of Japanese producers, analysts say. But attention to manufacturing processes, materials and testing can be substandard, increasing safety risks.

“Lithium is a hard-to-tame metal and even a little moisture seeping into the battery during the manufacturing process can be a fire hazard later,” said Richard Doherty, research director of the Envisioneering Group, a consulting firm.

In Guangdong Province, investigators are looking into how the substandard batteries made their way to the market and whether they could have entered the export market, appearing to be identical to Motorola and Nokia goods.

DIY Floppy Disk crafts

Good weekend projects with the kids. Maybe even a suit of armor.

Germany or Florida?

This one would be... Germany.

Ita-sha meets Forza

The goofy ita-sha movement comes to Forza Motorsport 2 using an *insane* number of layers. The graphics worksmanship on these virtual cars, apparently being sold via player-player auctions, is just amazing.


Note to self: Buy Xbox 360 *and* a Wii.

Knock knock!

From NYTimes this morning...

OAKLAND, Calif., May 31 — For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.

Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building.

OK yeah, let's go ahead and take this New York Times interview about my privacy concerns, so they can show the street intersection where I live:

09 f9 and all that

I gotta get me one of these shirts.

What a mess

East Bay residents: What's wrong with this picture? Discuss.

Made in China (sometimes Taiwan)

Wow, I'm going to start factory OEMing all my stuff. Try queries like [mp3 players] and [strollers]. Or, how about a bus?

Borat Air

Be at the Istanbul airport. Cash only, please.

Let them drink Petrus

(link above to NYT, registration req'd)

The case has lingering overtones for Sergeant Wade, who also was working on a case in nearby East Palo Alto, a city that has long wrestled with high crime rates.

“An 18-year-old girl was shot point-blank in the head and I received no calls about it,” he said. “The wine theft? A gazillion. It kind of shows you where people’s values lie.”

Yup.

Rosie, meet Kramer and Mel. Kramer and Mel, Rosie.

Discuss.