My server was hacked yesterday morning, and is in a really bad state. It’s only back up temporarily due to the heroic efforts of Chris Kacerguis at Austin Web Development, and I owe him big time.

In the event that my server goes down, please use my e-mail address at wetpixel.com, which is my first name @ that domain.

On top of all of this, a friendly neighbor at home discovered the contractor for the law firm housed downstairs walking on the roof of my car to reach the ceiling above my parking space. When is it ever OK to walk on the roof of someone’s car to do work!? Morons.

A conversation a few minutes ago, with my strange sister, who is in Taiwan with my mother: (read more »)

Intermittent, crippling, computer-hardware failures + 45 days out of warranty + multiple deadlines + imminent departure for foreign countries = shitload of cash out of wallet + craploads of time + elevated blood pressure + no sleep. (read more »)

OK, this is ridiculous. This month, I’ve had to turn down two comped trips to the Galapagos and one to Cocos Islands. In March, I turned down a trip to Thailand. (thanks for the offers, guys!)

Clearly, I need to rearrange my schedule so I’m free all the time.

I … don’t … feel so well (reference, anyone?). I’ve been almost utterly unproductive all day, having spent hours upon hours fighting with a server migration instead of doing work that clearly has to be done. Luckily, Vienna came over and rescued me; we went to Koryo for some late-night sushi before we parted ways (she, to the studio, and I, back home…).

hangin’ w/[name removed]

Geoff Nuttall invited me over last night for an evening of chili, guacamole, margaritas, and wine with the [name removed] Quartet and associated branches of the [name removed] family (Emily, Andrew, Caroline, Miguel, and Anna). Those of you who know Geoff know that he is crazy about all things extreme — especially when food is involved. The guacamole, chili, margaritas, and creatively mixed drinks were all awesome. (read more »)

I’m migrating ECHENG.COM (and 21 other domains) to a new server. Over the next 72 hours or so, you may notice bizarre behavior and missing comments (if you are leaving comments).

For example, right now, I’m getting the new server when I hit echeng.com. But the new server gets the old server when it requests echeng.com (bizarre). So when I PHP include something from within a page living on http://echeng.com, it tries to grab it from the old server. Exciting.

Treo vs. Blackberry: I’ve had it with Palm products. Last week, my Verizon Treo 600 froze YET AGAIN while ringing (it freezes often), and I had to (again) attempt to pull the reset tool out of the stylus and reset the device — while driving, at night. I used the Treo 600 on Verizon’s network for nearly a year, and during that time I had three catastrophic hardware failures (#1, #2, #3). The Palm Treo is the only phone I’ve had that has forced me to keep a second phone as a backup.

I’ll have to admit that I really liked the Treo when I got it. It seemed to work, and PDA integration wasn’t so bad. (read more »)

Hey, guys. Sport Diver Magazine is running a poll to help them decide on the cover of their next issue. One of my photos is in the running; if you like it best, please vote for it. Otherwise, vote for the one you like the best. :)

me and cindy

My friend and graduate-school roommate Jeremy Henrickson threw a big, chili cook-in yesterday. I didn’t actually get to eat any of the chili because I had just stuffed myself with Japanese food, but it smelled good. :)

Jeremy’s parties are always a lot of fun because he brings in so many people from different social circles. I think the most common response I received to the question, “so… how do you know Jeremy?” was “my friend met him at a party a couple of years ago…”

I arrived a bit late, but ended up being the last one to leave. And today, my body finally decided that I had been pushing it too hard. I woke up at 2:30pm, and still felt like crap. :) (read more »)

chee-yun and warren

I’ve had a music-filled few weeks! After a wonderful musical experience at the SLSQ’s Summer Chamber Music Seminar, I had a few days in the company of Paul Groves, whose operatic return to San Francisco as Ferrando in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte was awesome, as usual. On July 4th, Geoff, Livia, Elliot and I went up to Tiburon for a Korean feast at his place, and the carnivores among us ate so much kalbi that we felt sick! (sorry, Elliot! :)

Over the weekend, Warren and I drove up to Sonoma to hang out with the Chee-Yun and the St. Lawrence String Quartet at the Green Music Festival at Sonoma State University. In addition to Chee-Yun and the SLSQ, Friday’s concert featured Lindsay Deutsch, Aloysia Friedmann,
Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Alisa Weilerstein, Stephen Tramontozzi, and Jeffrey Kahane. (read more »)

doc gruber @ sharklab

Hey, guys! Check out my friends when the Mythbusters guys kick off Shark Week on July 17th. But don’t watch the rest of Discovery’s Shark Week programming, which is all media spectacle crap about how dangerous sharks are. Discovery should be ashamed to be giving in to the same bullshit that made the “Summer of the Shark” possible.

The Mythbusters guys were at the Bimini Shark Lab, which is where I spent a month a couple of years ago.

Um. Can someone record and encode it for me, since I no longer have cable? ;)

tow/chang wedding

Speaking of special weddings, Adam Tow and Rae Chang were officially wed at SF City Hall on June 1, 2005, where I photographed them with Ex-Mayor Willie Brown, who happened to be walking around the premises. Adam and Rae had a very cool-looking judge marry them, and outside, a protest raged on against our wonderful governor — which Rae promptly jumped into upon walking outside. (I can still hear Adam protesting: “Look! There are police. I don’t want to go to the slammer! :)

On June 19th, Adam and Rae had their public wedding ceremony, which was attended by 200 relatives (!) and 100 friends. They really put a lot of work in the wedding. (read more »)

mollie and cristian

I went to a really special wedding a week and a half ago. Mandy’s sister, Mollie, married a nice man named Cristian at the Knox residence just outside of Milwaukee. We were all a little worried because the day before the wedding, the temperature hit a muggy 100°F, which clearly would have been painful for an outdoor ceremony and reception. Luckily, a thunderstorm rolled in that evening, and the next day turned out to be relatively cool — and absolutely gorgeous. (read more »)

the slsq at work

I’ve posted images from the 2005 SLSQ Summer Chamber Music Seminar. Had a great week, as usual! If you want to leave a message, please do it on the other page.

This is the first time I haven’t bothered to go over each image in Photoshop (it only takes me about 10 seconds per image, but where there are a couple hundred images, those 10-second chunks add up…). The images look fine, I think. :)