Category Archives: Random stuff

Finally found a place to live…

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I haven’t blogged about this, but my landlords are getting married and they wanted to move into the condo themselves. So I had to find a new place. Initially I wanted to move to Mountain View – something within walking/skating distance to Castro Street / Caltrain / Light Rail. I subscribed to like 8 search feeds at Craigslist and looked at about a dozen places all over the map and from like 1.2k to 3.3k a month. 😆

Ironically, I ended up just moving to the condo right above my current one. Basically I looked at quite a lot of places and I had a matrix to grade them, and this place is actually pretty ideal, with the exception that it is not within walking distance to a Caltrain station, nor a bar that is open til 2. But then the drive up to SF isn’t bad, and Sherry lives in the middle of a ton of bars and pubs so no problem. I posted to the residents Yahoo! group and got a few replies almost right away, and turns out the guy who lives right above us is moving out so I’ll just move into it. 🙂 It is on the top floor, so the living room has vaulted ceiling and extra windows, the ceiling is pretty damn high, I’m not exactly sure how many feet, my guess is around 20 something… It would be much better for setting up my strobes. Right now the modifiers almost touch the ceiling when I do photoshoots.

I used Google Spreadsheet to compare places, it totally sucks btw. Here are the items I care about, if you care to read them…

  • pet-friendly
  • # bedrooms and bathrooms
  • move-in timeframe
  • privately owned vs apartment management company
  • garage (attached?)
  • washer/dryer in unit
  • fitness center (and if it’s got free weights, and if so, how much? a lot of them only go up to 50lb which is a complete joke)
  • pool (heated all year?)
  • closet space, walk-in closet?
  • neighborhood (crime, how it looks, if it’s close to restaurants, bars, grocery store, dry cleaner, etc etc)
  • distance to office
  • distance to caltrain
  • amount of storage room
  • icemaker in freezer?
  • loft-style? I’m kindda a sucker for lofts, especially multi-level spaces
  • rent

In my search I kindda liked this new apartment community right next to SCU called Domicilio, it probably would be awesome for singles coz there is a school across the street from it. 😉 It is also 0.3 miles away from a Caltrain station. I also liked Avalon at Cahill Park, it’s very close to the big San Jose Caltrain station (almost all trains stop there, including the bullets and baby-bullets), and they have some 1BR lofts that are quite nice. But I didn’t like how they jacked up the prices over the phone to lure me into signing a lease immediately, bad bad tactic. 🙂

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New AMEX Gold benefits start Oct 1

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I was checking my fatwallet feed and found discussion on benefits changes for Amex gold… Looks like they are no longer differentiating between Membership Rewards and Membership Rewards Options, which is great coz it was confusing as hell… Not exactly sure after Oct 1 what the differences would be between the Preferred Rewards and the Rewards Plus, besides the 5 free (not really free, more like included) additional cards.

Roadside Assistance is nice to have for me, I’m used to having it but the EVO doesn’t come with it.

Bonus Points Mall ? starting October 1
Roadside Assistance Anywhere ? starting October 1
The Event Ticket Protection Plan1 ? starting October 1

American Express® Cards: Rewards Plus Gold Card

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Bush goes retro to avoid prosecution

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Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The U.S. Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crimes charges under both the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration’s military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.President Bush and his attorney general agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to U.S. treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.One of Bush’s changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.Bush’s other change would protect from prosecution any U.S. government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits “at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Sen. John McCain’s amendment against torture.Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says that Bush’s changes “immunize past crimes.”Under the U.S. Constitution and U.S. legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. What do Americans think of their president’s attempts to immunize himself, his government, CIA operatives, military personnel, and civilian contractors from war crimes?

Bush Goes Retro to Avoid Prosecution – by Paul Craig Roberts

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