2008 May 01 « The Life of a Silicon Valley Rockstar

Best & Worst Volleyball Movies

Another post made me think about the lack of good volleyball movies. Adam Sandler hasn’t even made a volleyball movie and he’ll make a movie on anything! Here’s my take on volleyball movies I’ve seen. Add your thoughts and additions in the comments section.

Cloud 9: A washed out former star in need of money has a get rich plan…start a volleyball team whose players consist of group of beautiful athletic strippers.
Side Out: C. Thomas Howell and Peter Horton play beach volleyball and win the hollywood equivalent of the Manhattan Beach open.
All You’ve Got: Pretty bad movie… I watched it with a girls team I was coaching.
Top Gun: So the movie wasn’t about volleyball, but the volleyball scene was one of the best!
Iron Ladies, aka Satree Lek: Good call Hugh! I’ve never seen it but it might be worth checking out.

Any others I’m missing??

May 1, 2008 Posted by Alex | Life | volleyball | 3 Comments

Random thoughts on the first day of May

Life After Marriage

I got some great news from one of my longtime friends, Quinn, or as I call her Quinnalicious. She’s getting married! Her and her fiance Tim are headed down south this weekend to tie the knot. I wish them the best of luck, now and in the inevitable trials ahead

Another friend got some bad news today. (I’ll let you decide if the news above is good or bad. It probably depends if you’ve ever actually been married!) He got demoted. Well, they’re technically calling it a transfer, but he’s out a ton of money. Losing money = demotion in my book and that sucks.

Onto something a bit more personal… I have a client that’s having a little trouble paying their bills. They’re already overdue on two invoices, three as of tomorrow. The project PM has been really helpful but their AP department is clueless. You’d think “net 30″ would be sufficient for them to get their act together… guess not.

Finally, something that made me fall out of my chair laughing today. I was checking out Fille deLoyers blog today and came across her link to someecards.com. Totally irreverent and funny as hell!

All this means I needed a drink when I got home. Bypassing beer and not being in the mood to build a cocktail I grabbed a bottle of sake from the fridge. The Ozeki Ginjo Premier is one of my favorite sakes. It’s fairly inexpensive, by wine standards, at around $20/bottle. Fairly dry, floral and refreshing. Best of all it’s local in Hollister, CA. Unfortunately the Ginjo Premier is the only offering from Ozeki I really like. If I had to pick a local portfolio I think Takara’s Sho Chiku Bai brand offers good value.

May 1, 2008 Posted by Alex | Life | me, money, sex | No Comments Yet

Twitterbot: A cool toy

I saw that a colleague, Carlo Longino had his blog auto-update his twitter stream with new posts. He uses twit tools and they aren’t available for those of us on wordpress.com so I found twitterbot. Another option is twitterfeed but I couldn’t get it to work. I’m also a little leary of using a service for this sort of thing, no offense Mario.

It doesn’t run as a service technically, but I’m considering setting it up that way using the Microsoft SC tool.

May 1, 2008 Posted by Alex | Life, Technology | blog, Microsoft, rss | No Comments Yet

A ride up the coast

After almost a year and a half at Motorola leading their Terayon IT group I decided I needed a vacation to clear my head. I was feeling pretty burned out and some great roads and time alone seemed just the ticket! In hindsight it really was great and just what I needed to jump back into the rat race. Here’s a summary of the trip…

Leave: morning of April 16th from San Jose, CA
Return: Sat April 19th
Goals: ?? head north on route 1, find cool stuff, ride fun roads. Maybe
go “home” through grass valley to visit family
Bike: Triumph Speed 4
Distance/tank: 120-130 miles

I wrapped up my ride route today and head out tomorrow. I also picked up a set of Helimot Buffalo 365 gloves to substitute for my Racers on this trip.

Here’s the final route.

Day 1: San Jose to Fort Bragg
Planning to stop for the night in Fort Bragg, enjoy some beer at the North Coast brewery and stay in a local hotel. I’d really like to enjoy the ave of the giants in full sunlight so I don’t think I’m going to head to fortuna… but who knows?

Day 2: Fort Bragg to Yreka through Happy Camp
This day should be a LOT of fun! Avenue of the Giants in the morning, swing a right just north of Eureka and east on 299. Then jump on 96 to Happy Camp. If it’s early I’ll jump on Scott Bar to hwy 3, but more than likely stay on 96 to 263 into Yreka for the night.

Day 3: Yreka to Grass Valley (the scenic route)
Down 3 to Trinity lake in the morning. Rejoin 299 into Whiskeytown for lunch (what’s there?) 5S at Redding to catch 36E right past Lassen (darned snow!). From there I’ll catch 89 all the way around to Gold Lake to catch up with 49 past downieville into Grass Valley where there’ll be a big BBQ waiting courtesy of the folks.

Day 4: Grass Valley to Home through the Delta
Hmm, doesn’t look like there are many interesting ways to get back to Sac. I’m guessing I’ll be pretty worn out by Day 4 anyway. In Sac I’ll pick up 84/160 along the river into Isleton. Then it’s into Brentwood with a possible stop at Bethel Island to visit some friends. Vasco road to 680 home.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the ride. 300 miles a day of roads like this!

Pure MotoRoad heaven!!