dannyman.toldme.com

Theophoric Daniel

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/16/theophoric-daniel/

I ended up wandering around Wikipedia, and discovered:

1. My given name, Daniel, literally means “judge-is-god” in Hebrew
2. Though, Hebrew goes right-to-left, so דָּנִיֵּאל literally reads (to me) as “el is judge”
3. Daniel is thus theophoric, which means it “embeds the name of a god, both invoking and displaying the protection of that deity.”
4. “El was the supreme god, the father of mankind and all creatures and the husband of the Goddess Asherah.”
5. In Judaism, God has many names: “the various names of God in Judaism represent God as he is known, as well as the divine aspects which are attributed to him.”
6. The historic figure of Daniel was a pious Jew who spent most of his life away from his kinfolk, working for King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon.
7. Daniel interpreted the handwriting on the wall that had been left by Angels, which foretold the imminent assassination of King Belshazzar and the subsequent fall of Babylon to Persia.
8. Under Persian rule, Daniel was given great administrative authority, and likely played a significant role in freeing the Jews from the “Babylonian Captivity”, though he himself did not return to Jerusalem with them.
9. Later in his life, Daniel ministered as a prophet. In Christianity he is one of the “four great prophets” but in Judaism, he is not regarded as a prophet, because he did not speak directly with God.

And I can’t boil this paragraph down to a bullet point:

Daniel’s fidelity to God exposed him to persecution by jealous rivals within the king’s administration. The fact that he had just interpreted the emperors’ dream had resulted in his promotion and that of his companions. Being favored by the Emperor, he was untouchable. His companions were vulnerable to the accusation that had them thrown into the furnace for refusing to worship the Babylonian king as a god; but they were miraculously saved, and Daniel would years later be cast into a den of lions (for continuing to practice his faith in YHWH), but was miraculously delivered; after which Darius issued a decree enjoining reverence for “the God of Daniel” (6:26). He “prospered in the reign of Darius, and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian,” whom he probably greatly influenced in the matter of the decree which put an end to the Jewish Captivity (B.C. 536).

Anyway, if I wanted to draw anything from this namesake, it would be that spending most of your adult life far from home serving a doomed empire is perfectly reasonable, but keep pious in order that one may interpret the “writing on the wall” which can lead one to develop the power to free people. Piety will further bring the benevolence of God, which will come in damned handy on those occasions when one is tossed into the lion’s den.

And here I am sitting around in California with the moniker “dannyman” which could be read “judge is man” . . . which strikes me as awfully impious.

I guess I’ll have to try harder. And I’ll have to rely on my own good judgment. Dang.

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Colorado Road Trip

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/14/colorado-road-trip/

So, I am catching up with all sorts of things these days, and there is the constant threat that I may return to full-time work at any moment. Those with an appetite for autobiographical detail may like to know that I have just posted several back-dated entries from last month, covering my road trip out to Pueblo, CO, where I visited Dad and his family. URLs for the voyeuristic:

http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/11/driving-to-long-beach-ca/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/12/long-beach-ca/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/13/vegas-baby/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/14/forlorn-stuck-in-moab-again/
http://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/15/bad-starter-dont-stop/

That’s what I have written up so far . . . as a spoiler: I made it to Pueblo just fine, replaced the starter myself, I bought a new camera, we celebrated Gwen’s birthday, had some quality time, and then since I couldn’t spend enough time in Pueblo, I took Dad back to San Francisco with me, where he spent a week that we both enjoyed a great deal. I dropped him off in Emeryville and he took the train home. Last Wednesday I went with a friend to see the awesome movie “The Valet” and on the way to the movie I got a call from Dad that he had driven the car to Wal*Mart, which had been a scary ride for Gwen, but proof that he could help drive on their own road trip to Chicago later this month.

At any rate, I hope to write a bit more about these things, but I make no promises. Along the way, I am still uploading pictures, so keep an eye on Flickr, and if the remainder of the trip interests you, you can skim over the “Colorado Road Trip April, 2007” collection.

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resume-thanks@google.com

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/26/resume-thanksgooglecom/

Well, this is kind of neat. Nowadays Google sends you an automated message telling you they’re not interested:

From: resume-thanks@google.com
Subject: Thank you

We received your resume and would like to thank you for your interest in
Google. After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we
have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strong
match at this time.

Thanks again for considering Google. We wish you well in your endeavors
and hope you might consider us again in the future.

Sincerely,
Google Staffing

Just for fun, I had submitted a resume, to see what random stuff Google might come up with. The reason being that any time I had applied in the past, what always happened is I would hear nothing for a month or two, then I would be contacted by a recruiter for a completely different position, and the recruiter would have no idea about the position I had originally applied for.

Last time, though, the position the recruiter proposed was more interesting than the one I had found on my own. My best understanding–and my understanding may be out-of-date–of the Google hiring process is that the managers meet with the recruiters on a weekly basis, so it will typically take two to three weeks for a recruiter to get a candidate into the pipeline: (more…)

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The Road to Pueblo

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/04/15/bad-starter-dont-stop/

I wanted to get down to Durango, about an hour away, in enough time to catch the day’s scenic excursion ride to Silverton and back on the Durango and Silverton Railroad, before pushing on to arrive in Pueblo. I took a nice hot shower, then packed and loaded up the car. I was concerned at the ice on the windshield, and I without a scraper, but that concern was backburnered because the car didn’t start.

Awww crap.

I figured I’d revisit the problem after I had grabbed a cup of mind-enhancing coffee.
I grabbed my travel mug and headed toward the cafe where I had dined on pizza last night, and encountered a lady who explained that that guy usually opens around noon. I walked over to the main street and up a couple blocks and grabbed some coffee and a muffin at a bustling shop full of snowboarder duuudes.

I hustled back to the car, and the same lady from earlier passed by, and I asked about mechanics. There were a couple in town, but they were closed today. You could knock at their house, and they might help, but it is probably better to let them alone. I agreed that I like to have my weekends off, too, and as much as I’d like to spend the evening with the family in Pueblo, I figured that I could get a lot of reading done and rest easily another night in this quiet little mountain town. Maybe I could track down the train station and welcome the steam train as it arrived in this old snowy mountain town, which could be a lot of fun even if I didn’t get to ride.

All the same, I fiddled with the wires some more, but I couldn’t do much without even the most basic tools, so I wandered toward the highway were there looked to be gas stations, where I might find a brief diversion, and possibly even something useful.

I found someone useful. The guy at the Citgo admitted that this was the first weekend of the season that they were open for weekend service, but that he wasn’t a real mechanic, just the weekend warrior. (The owner / mechanic’s son, it turns out.) He said he had a few ideas that might help, but that he’d have to close the shop for a few minutes . . . I wandered back to the car and a bit later he pulled up to the hostel, cleaned up my ugly battery wires, noting that the one terminal had been overtightened and cracked, so let’s put on a new one . . . explaining that you only have to tighten the terminal to the point where it doesn’t move on the post . . . doesn’t start? Okay, so, you did the right by the battery, and the solenoid, so yeah, its looking like a bad starter.

Sure, he could order a new starter and get it replaced during the week, but in this situation, sometimes you could tap the starter a few times with a hammer, and then he crawled under the car on the muddy street, found the starter motor, tapped, got out of the way, and I successfully started the car. He explained where the starter is, and that it looks like a cylinder, and in my case, a very rusty cylinder, and that I could tap it myself if I had to, but that at this point, the starter is likely about to fail completely . . . it might work fine, the tapping trick might work a few more times, but most likely I’ve got just a few more starts, if any, before the thing fails completely and leaves me stranded somewhere. We figured that I might as well keep the engine running and get to Pueblo as soon as possible, where the starter could be replaced under favorable conditions. He reminded me that you don’t actually have to stop the engine to fill the tank . . .

I beamed as he modestly basked for just the briefest moment in heroic glory. I got the sense that he might be most content to account the incident as a good deed, and waited just a moment more before I inquired as to whether and how much cash he should charge for his time. He figured about fifteen or twenty dollars. He then, as I figure it, very quickly considered my circumstances versus my poverty . . . computer guy from San Francisco . . . not working . . . going to see Dad . . . nice old clunker . . . is going to need a starter . . . stayed at the youth hostel . . . and set the charge at $15.

I headed down the road, and there was still a chance I could make Durango in time to catch the train, maybe, and I thought over whether it would be worth the risk if I could, and concluding that yes, if I made Durango in good time I would risk stopping the car if I got to ride the train, because even if I got stuck, I would have had a good time for my trouble.

At any rate, I was still on the highway at 10:00, when the train was set to leave. Several minutes later I noticed some smoke on the horizon . . . I slowed down and listened out the window . . . yes, that was the train coming toward me, parallel to the highway!

You know I pulled over to the shoulder and managed to squeeze some pictures out of my dying old camera! And these were the last pictures I ever took with this camera, which has since refused to work at all.

My last camera, a Canon S100, died at around the same time as Grandma Howard, so I gifted the-camera-I’d-taken-round-the-world to my Grandma to take with her in her coffin to her next life, which makes me inclined to see changing-cameras as epochal. It had been a weird twist of fate to have been in the Midwest at that time, which allowed me to visit her in the hospital just before she entered hospice, and which allowed me to drive back up to Michigan for her funeral not long after. I was pretty broke that summer, working in the cafe in Champaign, and it wasn’t until I was back at Mom’s house and living on Unemployment Insurance that I dared to buy my Canon S400, which I badly wanted for a trip that Yayoi arranged for us: we drove together in my car to Boston so she could check out a job fair. That was the first road trip that I took with a woman who, when I returned to professional work, I invited to live with me. Later, we would marry, move to California, and become separated. I took a third professional job in San Francisco during the divorce process, and shortly after the divorce concluded, so did my most recent job.

So, you will pardon me if I read extra significance into these last photographs and bust into personal metaphor; As the day began, the trip to Durango looked unlikely, but with some outside help, I was pleasantly surprised to be on the way. I was warned that stopping to catch this train was risky, but I decided to take the chance and try for the ride. It proved to be a long shot, and I ultimately missed the full experience, but I am glad I made the effort, because I got close enough to be reminded of my own love for what I had pursued. I don’t regret the near miss, and I know better than to blame anyone. What I do know is that I really dig trains, and that at the next appropriate opportunity, it will be my privilege to buy a ticket, hop into the cab, and work to keep the fire stoked for a prolonged ride through beautiful country. (And until then, I will work for a better understanding of the whole darn thing, to avoid or at least tackle nasty surprises on the next trip.)

So, I rolled through Durango without stopping, and turned East onto US-160. Since I hadn’t stopped to ride the train, I was ahead of time, and perhaps the natural beauty of the mountains on my final leg was further enhanced by mid-day light, as well as my own hunger from not stopping for food, and my eagerness to pull into Pueblo sooner-than-expected, to see Dad and Gwen. That was a good ride, and a homecoming that did us all some good.

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A crap page today …

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/31/a-crap-page-today/

Hello, it’s me again. This Matthew Malooly feller has some interesting web site. He’s a lab-sitter like me, I think. Someday I’ll do like the old site had and have a list of web pages I like. Good, well-written and informative web sites you know, about people that introduce them to their mind, assuming they have one. If they’re dull they mightn’t bother with a web site in the first place. And if you find me dull, well feel free to go elsewhere, I’m not forcing you to read.

Which is one great thing about the web. You read what you want, you see and listen to what you want, and what is nasty you just avoid.

Actually, the dude has a link to my page. I remember now. It’s like we see eye to eye on this web page stuff.

Well, on through other URLs I have sitting in my mail to go through …
Okay, so it’s been a good haul, and I now have a new page up to deal with the fact. Yay!

So after class today I scanned pictures. Gotta start gettin’ goin’ again you know? Lotsa good ones on the way, but you won’t see ’til I’m done settin’ everythang up. That might be awhile. Sorry. Like fine wine … nothing before it’s time you know?

I wish I could think of a few interesting things to say here? Well, let’s see, I did think yesterday to maybe start and this time stick to carrying a little “idea” book around with me … what have we got?

A procmail “mail filter” CGI “control center” — ‘nuf said! Huh? Well, it’ll be a relatively complex CGI ultimately for EnterAct to implement for it’s users. The idea seemed particularly keen last night after I’d read that Tom was gonna audit IMAP so it was secure enough to run on EnterAct’s systems. Means two things to me – one is that there should be coming about a secure implementation of IMAP (for BSD) and two that people might find the most basic features of procmail to be useful: primarily of simple sorting for multiple INBOXes accessible via IMAP and perhaps SPAM filtering. I’m still working out details in my mind while idly wondering what likelihood of and where I’m gonna find the free time to engage in such a project. Yikes!

Story idea — Alright, point-of-view of a tree as it’s being chopped down … you know, what it feels about humans, what it knows about them. The history of how the humans keep going in number, the lumberjack’s perspective. The trick though is that I know nearly nothing of forestry or what it may be like to be a lumberjack.

Rhet 143 — Gotta write this gay “Narrative of Place” … so why not go to the moon eh? Cold, timeless, sterile, no air, dark and desolate. Avec ma solitude … well, dunno, we’ll see but Seshagiri wants a draft for Wednesday. Grrr!

Well, another crap journal entry muddled through. Go back and enjoy Matt’s site, and that of Brian Lee the rat boy! I go do something else now. I’m tired.

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Craigslist Missed Connection

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/01/craigslist-missed-connection/

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/284107399.html

Dan Howard!! Put in a change of address!! (sunset / parkside)

hey dude, I am tired of having to take all your mail to the post office and doing the whole return to sender thing. you have not lived at this address in the 5 years that we have been here, wtf? who are you running from? we get cards from your relatives even, you could at least tell your family that you moved. we got a package for you the other day, and i am tempted to open it. what is it? i think its a vhs tape of something, is it child pornography? we even received your muni pass once. you paid for it, and had it sent here? what’s up, seriously? there are too many damn dan howards in the city for me to just start calling people, so if you are dan howard and you ever lived on –th ave, put in a change of address already.

sheesh.

In July I moved to San Francisco at xyzz –th Ave. But a few times I told people xxyz –th Ave. Well, for the past several months a neighbor on the next block has been receiving the occasional misdirected mail, and recently she got fed up and posted the above ad.

Within about two hours a friend forwarded the link to me, and I dropped off some address labels in exchange for a box of cherry cordials from my Grandma. :)

Love,
-danny

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Marriage Advice: Finances

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/01/26/sharing-finances-marriage-divorce/

Some notes I dropped on Yelp Talk:

In my marriage, all the income went into the Savings account.
We drew an equal allowance, transferred monthly to separate Checking accounts.
We shared expenses equally. We each wrote a check for half the rent, I covered utilities, she covered groceries.
The wife was a student, the husband a tech professional.
I figured over time the breadwinner status might change.

I still think this was an awesome system. :) Basically, you set the allowances such that the Savings should grow over time, and there’s a “buffer” in the Savings account so that short-term loans may be drawn as needed to cover overages. Both partners are financial equals, and earning your money is something done for the family unit.

My last employer was slow setting up the 401(k) so at the end of 2006, we enrolled in individual Roth IRAs, and rolled some of the Savings into the 2005 Retirement.

One “advantage” of the individual IRAs turned out to be that in dividing community property at separation, the “community property” of retirement savings was pretty much “done” . . . not sure how it works with 401(k)s.

Last, I recommend that once you guys are ready to marry or such, you start your new life together with new accounts, etc. In the unfortunate event that you need to calculate “community property” down the road, having accounts clearly understood CP versus pre-marriage, that’s helpful.

-danny

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Caption Contest

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/01/08/crotchless-french-knickers/

I guess I have been buying a lot of random stuff on Amazon.com, all the same:

Captions, anyone?

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What’s Your Birthday?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/31/birthday-info/

This is not a New Year’s Resolution, simply something-I-want-to-do, and that is to keep track of everyone’s birthday, and hopefully send cards.

But, I lack data. If you are reading this, and you are a friend or acquaintance, please shoot me a quick e-mail with your birthday, birth year, and address.

Optional: Please indicate if you would like to share your information with other friends-of-dannyman, in which case I’ll dump your data in a pile with everyone else who wants to share, then I’ll forward the resulting list to the sharing types.

Thanks and Happy 2007!

Update: Please send phone numbers, as appropriate. I will not share the phone numbers. :)

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Make Danny Pretty: Jenny Yee Photography

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/05/dannyman-the-test-model/

A little while back, I had the chance to meet Jenny Yee, a fellow dot-com professional who, like me, has also recently moved to San Francisco. I was impressed by the quality of some of the portrait photography she has taken. She explained that she was working to set up a studio at her new place. I have been thinking that as I become comfortable with single life and begin looking forward to finding that special lady, it will be more and more important to look pretty: to put my best face forward.

I am still getting in to the whole projecting-a-self-image thing, and I’m not ready just yet to pay much to look glamorous, so I approached Jenny to volunteer as a “test model” to help her get up to speed with her new digs. She smiled warmly and agreed, and it is time I returned her favor by sharing the experience online. I will start with a melodramatic before-and-after, of High School Danny versus Jenny’s Web 2.0 Danny:

I smile, because while my shoulders have filled out and I have grown the goatee, in both images I see the same basic, good-natured geek. Fortunately for me: geek is now chic! (Some even feel fondly toward the old Napolean Dynamite look.)

Fun, huh? Well, so was the time spent with Jenny. (more…)

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Condom Innovation

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/11/21/condom-innovation/

I have a love-hate relationship with condoms.

I love worrying less about STDs and unplanned pregancy.

On the other hand, they require a bit of “planning ahead” so that you will not be caught unprepared with your pants down. When you do have them handy, hopefully they are close enough that you will not have to leave the embrace of your partner, hopefully your slippery fingers will find a corner of the packaging amenable to tearing, hopefully you will feel out the appropriate orientation so you don’t waste your effort trying to unroll the thing backwards, and hopefully you’ll pull it all off–err on–quickly enough to minimize the mood-killing time spent away from your lover fiddling with modern packaging.

Then–and while you’re not supposed to tell the skeptical teenagers this–although one might take pride at having managed the condom maneuver well, the physical sensations that ensue are never of the caliber found without a condom. One swallows these modest tragedies for the sake of engaging in quality lovemaking, but wouldn’t it be nice if condoms were somehow better?

Build a better mousetrap . . . alas, build a better condom, and the Internet will beat a path to your door. Pronto condoms has recorded nearly a million hits on their web counter: they have just launched a condom in South Africa with special packaging designed to make it easier to “get it on.” The demonstration video brought a moment of joy to my heart, because at last, the powers-that-be are thinking of people like me and trying to make my sex life better!

All the same, I will be truly impressed when they get that down to a one-handed maneuver. And even with this bit of innovation, there is still plenty of room for improvement for the world’s most popular prophylactic technology! A brighter future awaits! Let us get it goin’ on!

Thanks, Good Magazine.

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Halloween Party!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/11/03/halloween-party/

Well, I haven’t gotten around to throwing a housewarming party yet. The only other time I threw a party by myself was when I had some folks over for sushi back in Mountain View, 2000. It’s always been roommates or the wife to help me out. Anyway, when a lady on the Yelp talk boards expressed an interest in throwing a Halloween party, but her apartment was too small, I offered to co-host at my place. Well, she got the ball rolling, but had to bail. We had a great time anyway.

My costume was “thrift store drag queen” . . . kinda improvised but I did a pretty good job of putting together my feminine side. I felt a brief “oh my god what if the party is a dud” panic the week before, but as the day approached, well, things started to come together and the party itself was a great success! Probably around 40 people showed up. Nadia came out-of-costume and was coaxed into a “sexy nurse” ensemble that Lorah didn’t wear. Smashing! Ed took the cake, in my opinion, by dressing as boba tea.

Don brought grog, Karen brought pumpkin pie, Jenny brought a crew of Castro revellers from her own party. Everyone brought a bunch of fun, and then everyone cleared out at 1AM, many headed off to the Supper Club, and others carpooling home to get to work on Wednesday.

Cleanup was a breeze. I caught two beer spills, and all vomiting was confined to the toilet. I found a woman passed out on my bed and tucked her in comfortably on the couch.

I couldn’t have asked for a better experience!

Thanks, everyone!

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Talk – Is Yelp Elitist?

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/10/25/yelp-2/

My take on Yelp:

When it comes to social networking, I prefer to interact with articulate people. Grammar is one benchmark. Style and panache go a long way too. Passion is another element of good writing. So, yeah, Yelpers will tend to embody some combination of erudition, style, panache, and passion, and that stuff makes me hot!

I like that Yelp is not MySpace. There’s a “cover charge” here and that is comfort with written self-expression.

-danny

Of course, this is my personal view.  I am not speaking for my employer.

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Dishtowels

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/10/25/underpants-gnome/

When I worked at the Pizza Place there was an endless supply of thin white cotton towels.  After use they would be tossed in a hamper and swapped out with a weekly laundry service.  One day I asked Jefe for a dish towel.  “Deesh towels!” he mocked my queer midwestern vocabulary in his Mexican accent.  To Jefe, these “dish towels” were rags.

I was just thinking about it, and back home we had a “rag bag” in the laundry closet, which was populated by torn or stained old sheets, pillowcases, shirts, and the occasional underwear.   I guess if you’re running a restaurant, you want to set a certain standard for rags.  Though, I have heard that in developing countries, underwear is considered an acceptible rag for restaurant use.

Nowadays, I buy cheap little dishtowels by the dozen from the big box or hardware store.  I’m too snooty for a rag bag: defunct textiles are retired to the trash.  Somewhere in the midwest, the ancestors are weeping over my flamboyant lifestyle.

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Danny’s Sausage Factory

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/10/21/love-my-sausage/

The night before, I had poured myself a beer, but was then distracted by more important affairs.  The next day I had a neglected glass of Sierra Nevada Brown Ale resting on my counter.  I boiled my last garlic-basil pork sausage in the beer, while I sauteed onion and red bell pepper.  The beer boiled over a bit, so I let the heat down.  I chopped up a roma tomato and a handful of spinach, tossed the sausage in the frying pan with the onions, and split a wheat pita, coating the inside with spicy mustard.  I realized that everything was not going to fit in a single pita, so I had to cut the hot sausage in two, making me a pair of pita pockets.  I knew this was good stuff so I took pictures, and now that I see the pictures, I am filled with a craving nostalgia.  Gosh, that was a delicious meal!

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