There are things you know, things you know you don't know, but it's the things you don't know you don't know that are probably the most interesting. You know?

This is a bastardization of this meme, also seen here, here and here.

Four Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

1. Architect
2. Archaeologist
3. Steve Jobs
4. Cargo Pilot

Four Things I've Lost

1. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Purchased: February 1, 2006, 5:45PM. Lost: February 2, 2006, 12:30 AM.
2. 1 pair Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. First donned: July 3, 2004, 6:23 PM. Left on bar: July 4, 2004, 1:50 AM.
3. Pile of CMGI stock. Exercised: November 1999. Sold: uh.
4. A star-shaped patch of hair on the crown of my head, due to Really Stupid King of the Hill game. Date scalped: June 18, 1989.

Four Episodes of The Wire I Could Watch Over and Over

1. Season 1, episode 1: The Target
2. Season 1, episode 3: The Buys
3. Season 2, episode 1: Ebb Tide
4. Season 3, episode 11: Middle Ground

Four Links to Anil

1. Anil
2. Anil
3. Anil
4. Anil

Senator Russ Feingold finally came out and said it. 2008? Bueller?

Closure is an elusive quarry, maddeningly taunting you just far enough out of reach. Fuck, some days are hard.

Nick asked me today if there was a way to just reload the stylesheets without having to reload the whole page, which can be frustrating for AJAX development. I hacked at it for a bit and stuck it on our development environment, then cleaned it up into a bookmarklet. Drag the following link to your toolbar for CSS reloading happiness & superior quality.

Reload CSS

Update: Fixed it to work in Internet Explorer.^* Turns out the original code was doing too much work, adding/removing link elements. The new code simply replaces the href attribute with a randomized value.

javascript:(function() {
    var e = document.getElementsByTagName( "link" );
    for( var i = 0; i < e.length; i++ )
        if( e[ i ].rel.match( /stylesheet/ ) )
            e[ i ].setAttribute( "href", e[ i ].getAttribute( "href" ).replace( /\?_r\=[^&]+|$/, "?_r=" + Math.random() ) );
})();

^* Once. It crashes on the 2nd time, at least in IE6 SP2.

Rode around San Francisco on a rainy Saturday.

When talking with other cyclists, particularly other fixie riders the subject of gearing often comes up. My usual ride has an odd but very specific gearing: 47 up front, 19 in the rear. Why?

The gain ratio (47 / 19) is just a hair under two and a half (2.47). Good for going up (and down) hills in San Francisco. 47 and 19 are both prime. This distributes the wear pretty evenly over the chain and sprockets. Any given link on the chain will hit the same tooth on the chainring every 893 revolutions, which is approximately once per mile with 700c (~27 inch) wheels.

Empirical evidence leads me to believe this ratio is as close to perfect as you can get for San Francisco, for a brakeless everyday fixie. It's equally good for banging around town or a paradise (Tib) loop.

So iTunes users drive VWs and drink cider + imported beer.

WTF?

For a bunch of reasons, I refrain from eating at McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, etc. I'm not vegetarian, but the food I buy/cook tends to skew that way, and I generally buy organic produce, eggs, chicken, and whatever else I can.

Sometimes I absolutely just crave the plasticine mediocrity of a Mickey D's burger. There's something about how they've perfected the taste and mouth-feel of it that sometimes just sounds really, really good. I haven't caved into this particular urge in years (score one for standards), but it's getting harder.

What I want is an organic McDonalds. Not vegetarian, not even necessarily the most wholesome of corporate culture either (it wouldn't hurt), and not even having particularly good food. I want to be able to roll into OMcDs, order a couple bacon cheeseburgers, shake (is it too much to wish for soy?) and fries, sit down and stuff myself until that greasy-near-nausea feeling overcomes me. Well, maybe not the last part. Truth is, one of the reasons I don't partake of the McBurgers is just that. The grease overload giveth and the grease overload taketh away. Usually just the memory of my last fast-food binge is enough to keep me on the wagon for a few months.

So refined: a McDonald's clone, with organic beef/buns/produce, soy milkshakes and comparable fries, somewhere in the San Francisco area. I will gladly pay twice as much.