Too much for 140 characters!

Since I've been so busy these past months — international and domestic travel, super-busy job, getting engaged, etc. — I've grown quite fond of Twitter (follow me!) as the next way to do my obligatory social braindumps in a speedy, instantaneous manner. But so many little things have gone on that I can't contain myself to what's manifested itself as the modern form of haiku. So, here goes, a series of tweet-like thoughts, blissfully unrestrained:

• I've been so busy the past two months or so, I honestly forgot that it's OK to come home after a day of work and do something other than keep working. This isn't to say I'm a workaholic, it had just become habit.
  
• Recent culinary discovery: orange-olive-onion salad! Make a dressing with a fruity olive oil, lemon juice, and toasted then ground cumin seeds. Put some chicken on top, and then the cats love it, which is why I had to get up just now to put the bowl on a counter they can't reach.
• Cats! Belphegor and Shiva are the cuddliest I've ever met. Almost, but not really, too much so. As Dad puts it, it's like they're trying to climb inside your nostril.
• I bought a ViewSonic monitor from Amazon in December. The color was awful, too much light bled in from the side. Clearly a defective unit. I shipped it back (and got the Acer I'm typing on right now). Got an email today saying they'd deducted a 20% restocking fee, and inviting me to let them know if I was unsatisfied. I told them I didn't think it was fair for me to be penalized $50 for having gotten a bum unit. Just now I got an email saying I'd be credited the difference! Moral: always ask.

So much drama in the LBC

I'm coming up to speed as the Associate Product Marketing Manager for Local Business Center, which, like so many Google initiatives, goes an acronym: LBC. A quick Google search for LBC reveals plenty of other meanings, such as Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, Lancaster Bible College, and the Luther Burbank Center (now Wells Fargo Center for the Arts) in Santa Rosa. But whenever I hear the acronym, I get "Gin and Juice" stuck in my head, due to the first line of this seminal 1993 hit from Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle:

"With so much drama in the LBC, it's kinda hard bein' Snoop D-O-double-G..."

According to Urban Dictionary, LBC means either Long Beach City or Long Beach Compton. But anyway, it's not so bad to get this song stuck in my head, due to the surprising variety of covers out there! Ones I could find include (and apologies to Aza's Songza, but it's being all flaky right now so most of these links are through Seeqpod):

The original version by Snoop Doggy Dogg (can you believe this was made 15 years ago?)
The jam band version by the Gourds, so often misattributed to Phish
A ska cover by The Berlin Project (according to Wikipedia) that I heard in Charlie's a few nights ago (the chef who put it on said it was Sublime, but the guy's voice sounds like Rancid if anything)
A version with lots of screechy guitars that messes up the beginning by Hot Rod Circuit
A reggae version by Prince Fatty
An indie chick band version by SissyBar
A somewhat funky jazz version by Streetwize
A lounge version by Richard Cheese

Enjoy!

I'm on Street View twice!

In both of these, I'm about 3/4 of the way to the right, wearing a hat.


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How do you get on Street View twice? Run across campus while they're circling around. Props to Danielle, my pink-wigged partner in crime, for joining me in the mad dash!

Oh, and welcome to my new blog.