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Ever gone in a public restroom and seen one of those new-fangled sensor-activated automatic devices? They range from toilet flushing to soap dispensing and everything in-between these days, but some of them make more sense than others. Here’s my analysis.

1. Automatic Sinks – Marginal Usefulness. People touch the sink fixtures before and after hand washing. Before doesn’t matter, because you wash your hands just after turning on the sink, but generally having to turn off the water means there’s risk of post-washing contamination. There are ways to turn off most normal sinks after hands-washing by means of arms, elbows, or feet, so this isn’t a complete necessity, but is still very useful. Also, these save water by only being on when used. Kudos.

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Okay, now, normally when you see a blog post titled “I have the best girlfriend in the world” it’s some sappy lovey-dovey thing meant for said girlfriend to read and gush over. While she’s every bit deserving of such high praise, I’m posting this for another reason. I’m totally serious.

I have the best girlfriend in the world because she paid her sister $5 to try Firefox for a week.

See! Told you so.

This kinda sucks about living here in the summer:

And if you go to San Francisco, I mean, you’d think the fog would thin out a bit, or maybe that it’s between Berkeley and the city. But nope! I was there last night and it looked exactly like the picture. Cold, foggy, windy. Welcome to Summer in California!

That title is for Google; I’m leveraging my rank just a bit so people looking for information about this dentist can find an honest account.

I just got back from a dentist in Berkeley with whom I made an appointment after searching with my insurance provider’s site. He was the first on the list, and close, so I figured, how could one go wrong with all the regulations and inspections and everything they control in this modern dental world?

Well, you could at least Google the dentist. I didn’t, so I had no idea what to expect from the office I was approaching on Parker street, but I got an idea once I came to the address. It was a house. A two story house, with a messy porch and a little plaque on the wall with the dentist’s name on it.

Oh-kaaay… well, I could at least give it a chance. Maybe it’s white and sparkly on the inside, like a Twinkie.

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It’s the little things that count, because an engineer that gets the little things right doesn’t get the big things wrong.

In my car, a 1991 Honda Accord wagon, I am able, with both hands full of groceries lock and close all doors in the car using only my feet.

Now, my girlfriend would say at this point, “If your car is so great, then why is the passenger door light switch broken?” And to that, I would say, because my dad is not a Honda engineer, and he broke it trying to wire in a little blinking light that makes it look like there’s an alarm.

But she would never argue that both our Honda vehicles (she has a Civic) are fine pieces of engineering and good cars. Whoever engineered the front door lock on my car to lock all the doors and be big enough to hit with my foot, thank you. I owe you a Sapporo or something.

That’s the “entity” City of Berkeley, not the place. The place is alright, in general. The place would be really great if the parking tickets didn’t cost two arms and a leg. Take Alameda, for example, where I also got a parking ticket a few months ago while taking the GRE —it was only $17! I was like “wow!” and scrounged under the couch for some change with which to pay it. I happily sent them a check (after depositing the change in my checking account, thinking better of sending it in that little envelope they give you) including a little note: “I love your city and you’re not trying to rip me off! Thank you, I’m happy to send you this check for $17. Don’t spend it all in one place!”

Someone at the City of Berkeley must have been like, “hmm, how expensive can we make parking tickets and still make people pay them? What’s that you say? They legally have to anyway? Reeeeeeaaallly…. even if they’re…. [evil music] Thirty-Five Dollars?!?” Yes. Thirty-Five Dollars. It’s such an exorbitant fee that you have to spell it out: Thirty-Five Dollars. Yes. Hyphenated even.

More importantly, it’s so high that it makes me dislike the authority of the very city I live in, all the way to the point where I’m thinking of living in (dun dun duhhhhh) Oakland. Or, at least, I’ll never live in one house with four cars and a tiny driveway with two hour parking and street sweeping on the first Wednesday and Thursday of every month. That’s my own fault. It’s my penance, my punishment, our bad karma for having too many kars. Er, cars. It’s Berkeley’s way of saying “STOP driving, you’re part of the world’s problems!” while using the Thirty-Five Dollars to pay for gas and parking attendants in all the Interceptor parking enforcers that hover around the city like flies around a dump, picking off anything of value they can still find in their dirty heap of a city, even its own residents.

All I ask is for $17 tickets, not Thirty-Five Dollars… or, perhaps, tickets prorated for the city’s biggest supporters, like me! When you think of it that way, it makes me feel a little better, but shouldn’t they include that in the cost of living? I’m just thinking, if I move, and get an apartment where I have to (heaven forbid) pay for parking, even if it’s $70 a month, it’d still be cheaper than parking tickets. Wow.

Okay, I’m done. It’s just money. This probably feeds the homeless or something, right? Or at least it feeds the flies…

My friend Robert works at Dreamworks animation studios, so I went with some friends to see his latest work, “Flushed Away” the other night. I must say, I was very surprised. It was hilarious and fun, not at all what I had expected. I mean, it looks like a cheesy rip-off of Pixar’s new movie Ratatouille, right? (Seriously, is it just me, or is it weird that there seem to be two versions of the same themed movie always coming out around the same time? Two “penguin movies” are on their way, two “rat movies,” two “bug movies” a few years back… grant-theft marketing if you ask me). Fortunately, beyond a socialite rat as the main character, the two movies probably don’t have much in common.

The movie is genuinely funny. By that I mean it doesn’t avoid clichéd humor or repetition for cheap laughs; in fact it masters both. It seems like the writers took their cheesy plot (admittedly) and ran with it, just having a blast and having fun with their characters, which is really what comes across. I was laughing hysterically at more than a few scenes and jokes—they don’t even try to be PC, it’s great. The animation is also good, a great mix of Wallace and Grommit-like claymation (done on the computer of course) with a touch of added realism and fluidity. It matches the story well.
So, I thought I’d never say this, but if you’re looking for a fun movie, go see it! It’s a blast. The kids will love it too I’m sure.

And for Robert, I totally saw your name in the credits! Awesome job on that, uh… one scene

I parked my car accross the street last night because a friend was in our driveway, and this morning I go to move it back only to find a nice little ticket under the wiper. Street sweeping day. Oh, right. $36.

It wouldn’t bug me so much, but the time on the ticket is 9:39 AM, which is precisely one minute before I woke up—on the second snoose-button press. If only I had got up at 9:20 like I was supposed to…

Street sweeping. I bet that’s a good percentage of Berkeley’s parking revenue right there. Eh, support the city I guess…