We saw Ratatouille the other day and had a great time. Wonderful to look at, great graphics and a good story. The humor is funny without being mean, and the rats are really well done. The way they move is just like you’d expect rats to scurry about. They are truly revolting, not by being gross, but by playing on our reflexive fear of rats in the kitchen. Go see it! Spoilers below…

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Watching Discovery Channel tonight, it occurs to me that they should change their callsign to KRAB: all The Deadliest Catch, all the time!

So, as I passed slowly through security at Boston Logan yesterday, a TSA person took the stick of deodorant from my little Ziploc bag and confiscated it because it was over the regulation maximum of 3.4 ounces. True, it was four ounces, and a gel which is apparently bad. It was also three quarters empty. One ounce left, well, perhaps 1.5 ounces if you count the dregs that hold the deodorant in the dispenser. The contact lens fluid in the same Ziploc bag was also four ounces, full, and an opaque bottle, but it was not questioned.

Perhaps the TSA person thought that her colleagues could use some deodorant, and mine was of a preferred brand. And what could I do? Make a stink about it? That would be impossible: I had used the product myself that day and it would take several hours to wear off. I flew home instead.

The band Maldroid has rapidly attracted attention with their innovative videos and catchy songs. This is my favorite:

The other day, we spent a long weekend in Reno for La’s birthday. It was cold but quite nice: great food, didn’t lose too much money, decent hotel, nice little getaway to take our mind off things.

On the way back, Martin Luther King Day weekend traffic turned a four hour drive into six hours. In and of itself this was not unexpected: lots of people were going home that afternoon, one expects to have to allow some extra time. The scary thing was how badly people were driving. We passed several rear-end accidents and their associated backups. People were tailgating at 75Mph, overtaking on the right, the works. The worst offenders were, of course, the SUVs with snowboards on the roof. Their drivers must have thought they were still on the slopes, shredding.

My personal favorites: coming down the Sierra foothills, we drive into stopped traffic around a blind curve. The culprit is the setting sun, which hovers immediately above the road and makes it impossible to see anything but a flaming fireball that burns into your retinas. Around us, traffic screeches to a halt and in the rear view mirror I see a BMW spin out and hit the central divider. I hope no one got hurt, and judging by the level of traffic that appeared behind us no serious road closures occurred because of this.

Between Davis and Vacaville, several cars seem to be engaged in a race. This is at an interchange, but I forget which one. I see one coming a hundred yards behind, so I get in the far right lane so it can overtake me on the left. Instead, it veers to the right, gets on the onramp and blasts past us, driving on the shoulder before jerking back into the right lane. A late model Nissan Z that doesn’t even have its license plates, so I can’t write him up on Platewire.

To celebrate the new year, we took off and hiked to the top of Mount Tamalpais, the highest peak in Marin County.? There is a lot of UP involved: we started under 1000 feet at the Mountain Home Inn, and ended up on the East Peak at 2751 feet. There were quite a few people on the trail, on foot and on mountain bikes. Very lean and fit-looking people. Some were wearing “Happy New Year” party hats. On the peak, La took this awesome panorama:

And yes, one can theoretically actually see the house from here. I just checked in the Sun Porch, and the East Peak of Mt. Tam is clearly visible now that the Japanese Maple is leafless.

We found this hike on a page of the Mount Tamalpais Interpretive Association. Awesome way to start the year.

Happy New Year everyone! Have a great 2007.

The Apache Community Site shows information on Apache committers, the projects on which they work and their approximate geographical location. When I entered my info, I didn’t want to point to my house for privacy reasons. I initially used my office in downtown San Francisco, but when that job went away and I started working from my home office, I needed a new location. And what would be a better place than the back deck of Sam’s Anchor Cafe?

So, that’s where you go when you call up my location and zoom all the way in. We happened to be there today for lunch and had a great time. Great weather (we took the convertible), great company (the Garrous, who have lived in town for a year now), great food. On a whim, I ordered the onion ring appetizer and they were delicious. How often do onion rings turn out to be soggy, over-fried, a general disappointment? Not these. They were sweet, crispy, with a crust that did not even taste of deep frying fat and a delicious blue cheese dressing for dipping. Yum.