I wrote a guest blog over at autostraddle.com on A Woman’s-Eye View of WWDC. Check it out!

The first stop in my whirlwind tour of SF’s scene was to visit my good friend iceman. We were partners in the Operating Systems class back in the day.  We worked like dogs in the appropriately named “Mudd” computer lab, hacking the Linux kernel well into the night. And when you’re sleep deprived and writing C, there’s something super ridic hilarious about “your mom” jokes.

So went our refrain: “dude, you caused a kernel panic!” “your MOM caused a kernel panic.” “yo, we gotta reboot the VM!” “your mom’s gotta reboot the VM.” Trust me, hilarious. HILAR.

So while I expected Google to be wonderful and somewhat magical, I didn’t really expect it to be a slicker, paycheck-generating version of my college experience with iceman.  Except it was.  It was that, and so, so much more.

First, free food at the cafeteria.  Let’s talk fruit (peaches, berries), fruit shots (watermelon anyone?), kale, green beans, salads, sushi.  And then the unhealthy stuff like mac and cheese, cookies galore, boylan’s natural sodas . . . . all in a cafeteria overlooking the bay bridge and complete with binoculars to try and spot sea lions with.

Next is the office itself.  Yes to pool tables, ping pong, yes to big open spaces, yes to disco balls hanging from the ceiling.  Yes to massage chairs, a massage  room, lots of female employees, rock band stashed in someone’s office.  Yes, yes, yes to a SLIDE that was installed over top the left side of one staircase.  EFF YES to using a cafeteria tray to go down that slide.  Which makes you go ten times faster and, if you’re me, it beats the crap out of your knee and skins your arm — BUT WORTH IT!

So have I sold you yet?  I certainlly have sold myself.  Young, smart engineers, an incredible space, and an undeniable vibe.  Google San Francisco, you may tempt me away from NY.  Or at least over to Google NYC.

Oh, and a giangantic printer that they actually allow employees to use at their discretion.  There is a big “THIS IS EXPENSIVE” warning sign, but no access code, nada.  NICE.

And one last thing. Apple, I may be at your WWDC and loving it, but someone needs to invite me to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino and court the hell outta me. Till then, it’s GOOGLE: 1, APPLE: 0.

I’ve always enjoyed a good diet Pepsi but I usually find myself ordering Diet Coke out of habit.

I received an email the other day from the American Family Association that has made me into a complete + total Pepsi Evangelist.

The American Family Association is one of those wingnut conservative groups that spends a lot of money fighting gay marriage.  I signed up out of simple curiosity, and out of a desire to get to know, and try to understand, the opposition, and people that frown on me, my partner, and our life together.

So the latest thing that’s gotten their panties all in a wad is Pepsi.  Now the AFA seems to think that because Pepsi does the following things, they are the pinnacle of all evil and must be STOPPED:

1. Asks their employees to take diversity training courses
2. Advertises in magazines like OUT
3. Gives money to charities like the Human Rights Campaign
4. Is a sponsor of the NYC Gay Pride Parade

Now, the HILARIOUS thing about all of this, is the AFA is asking people to boycott Pepsi. But if the above is their criteria, I got some news for them. They can’t just stop at Pepsi. Here is a list of just a SAMPLING of the companies that not only received 100% on last year’s HRC Corporate Equality Index, all of whom fit the bill based on the bullet points above (except perhaps for the parade sponsorship), but were also rated a “Best Place to Work” for LGBT employees:

• Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc. So Kiss your Budweiser goodbye!
• Campbell Soup Co. Too bad, they’re kinda helpful in tough economic times
• Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. NO SODA FOR YOU
• Coors Brewing Co. NO BEER FOR YOU
  
• PepsiCo Inc. (duh)
• Walgreen Co. NO DRUGS FOR YOU

And that’s just a partial list of the Food category!  They also can’t buy camera or develop film (Eastman Kodak Co.), own a computer (Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) , Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc.), have a good calculator (Texas Instruments Inc.), ever fly in a plane (Boeing Co.) or pretty much do anything, EVER.

So back to Pepsi for a moment.

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The Whitney Museum is currently featuring a video projection/film by Sadie Benning entilted “Pause Play.”  You enter a large, darkened room with others standing, some sitting, against the walls.  If you brave the dark open space you may be rewarded with an empty, square ottoman to sit on.

The projection is a series of drawings set to music.

Overall the piece vacillates back and forth between the ordinary, the entertaining, and the tragic.  We see scenes of urban malaise: dilapidated buildings and barren landscapes.

There is an interesting interlude at a local bar, “Ze Bar.”  The night seems to progress in several stages.  First, there is the introduction: Play Pause: Ze Bar Early On

Then, the drowning one’s sorrows: Ze Bar Blues

Finally, there is ebullient celebration as the night gets older and the music at “Ze Bar” gets faster:  Pause Play: At Ze Bar
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Here are the notes I took from my first NYC Drupal Meetup.  I highly recommend the group.  I learned an enormous amount, I got to see the legendary Earl Miles, and the space where it’s held is nothing short of breathtaking (think Hudson River views + floor to ceiling windows).    

Drupal NYC Meetup 5/13/09   

 Speakers:

• Ezra Gildesgame
• Earl Miles (merlinofchaos)
• George Weiner, CTO of dosomething.org

 Nodequeue The nodequeue module can:

• Keep track of how to notify users
• Be used for granular permissions:
  • Ex: separate editors for designers, developers, admins
• Works very well with Nodes and Panels
• You can create Views specific to one queue
• Recently added international support
• You can have a MAX SIZE to the nodequeue
  • Once you’ve exceeded the max, the oldest story will be kicked out.
  • That’s why nodequeue works so well for lead stories
• USE CASE: Read more »
  

UPDATE!  See the end of this post for a coupon from the Seamlessweb folks

One of the best things about my first job in finance was that if you stayed after 7:30PM, you could order up to $25 worth of food from seamlessweb on the company’s dime.

I began using it from home as well, enabling my already bad stay-at-home inclinations.  Yes, it’s New York and yes, you couldn’t hit every restaurant even if you went to a new one for every meal, but what outsiders don’t realize is that New Yorkers spend almost their entire LIVES eating out.

New Yorkers have Breakfast on the go, Lunch outside the office somewhere, and Dinner with friends, dates and colleagues.  All of this adds up to a constant stream of restaurant visits.  After so much eating on the go, ordering in  starts to have a certain charm about it.  It’s irregular, it’s a treat, it’s deliciously isolating. It’s a nice break from our typical frenetic and highly social pace.  It has exactly as much charm, in fact, as . . . Read more »

Drupal is consistently blowing me away with its vast and eager community.  Now, in my quest to understand Drupal Theming, I have discovered an easy and powerful tool made by the folks over at PSD2CSS.  It’s a free service that allows you to upload a PSD file, and download a zip file containing a new folder you can simply pop into your Drupal install, and Bam!  Instant Theme.

Make sure you drop the entire folder (sites/) into the root of your Drupal install directory

There are three main resources I’ve been using to teach myself Objective-C, Cocoa Touch and iPhone programming:

• The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook by Erica Sadun
• The lecture videos from Stanford’s class on iPhone development
• The podcasts available on OS 3.0 from ADC (Apple Developer Connection; only available to registered iPhone developers)

The cookbook is excellent as a reference, and as a human-readable, easy-analogy alternative to the lecture slides.
The class itself holds your hand with their assignments, and I have been slowly builing up my Obj-C development skills through their carefully thought-out assignments.

Finally, the ADC videos provide an excellent window into what iPhone OS 3.0 can do, and code samples to help you start actually doing it.

Now, you may be asking, “that’s all fine and good, but where do the LOLCATS come in?”

SO, you only need look at someone and you can quickly make an assessment if they’re an apple or a PC person.  Apple’s TV marketing depends on it.  But I would like to argue that you need only look at their EDUCATIONAL SLIDE MATERIAL to make the same assessment.

Sure, this isn’t from WWDC, but this is on iTunes to help people understand how to use iPhone OS 3.0.  If I wasn’t a Mac convert before, this truly would have made me a believer:

Brilliant.  Bloody fucking brilliant.

In case you haven’t seen the gloriously inept advertisement an organization called “NOM” or “National Organization for Marriage” has put out, go immediately and watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI261VU0AZAI wanted to do a parody that did several things:

1. Played on the words and concepts of the ad
2. Made the world’s unsexiest commercial kinda sexy
3. Included a healthy serving of gay icons

You be the judge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaT5qyVQnBY

Clips, in order of appearance.  No Copyright infringement is intended!
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I continue to be perplexed by the extreme popularity of Rachel Maddow.  Yes, she is intelligent.  Yes, she is snarky and sarcastic.  Yes, she is funny.  Yes, she is bringing new visibility to the lesbian community, which is always wonderful for me in a deeply personal way.  But people seem to think that she is this unique voice that the world has never seen.  And even those in my beloved, dramatic community are fawning all over her.

But come on.  Really?  Rachel Maddow has all the ingredients of your typical, over-education, east coast lesbian.  The only novel thing about her is she’s on TV.   I think the problem is, while people know gay men, most people in this country just don’t know enough lesbians to see how completely typical Maddow is.  Let’s break it down

1.  Maddow is really, really into politics

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