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By daniel_jacobson, December 31, 2011 4:48 pm

Yesterday, the seven of us (me, Andrea, Maya, Adam, Jenn, Ryan and Allison) went to the ice rink for a little ice skating. Maya has never gone before, so I wasn’t sure how she would react. But Adam was a great coach and she was able to “skate” before too long (and had a great time along the way).

Maya Learning to Skate from Daniel Jacobson on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, Ryan was flying all over the ice! He was weaving in and out of people and deftly shifting gears to avoid collisions as we played chase. It was a lot of fun ad I was amazed at what Ryan could do on the skates!

Ryan Skating Laps from Daniel Jacobson on Vimeo.

Thanks for a great day out on the ice, Adam and family!

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By daniel_jacobson, December 23, 2011 4:29 pm

It has been quite a while since my last blog post.  That might lead someone to believe that I have completely abandoned the blog.  That wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption.  But the reality is that all of my efforts in writing have simply been dedicated to another project (book).  I will write shortly about that project, but in the meantime, this post is meant to inform the huge danieljacobson.com audience that I plan to write at least once a week here again in 2012.

-Daniel

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By daniel_jacobson, March 14, 2011 8:22 pm

After nearly three months, FedEx (well, actually an external firm commissioned by FedEx) found our missing package! Fortunately, we put some cards in the massive, 62-pound box that had our current address on them. The firm found the box, dug through its contents (presumably while holding their noses due to the rotting lemons) and sent us a note in the mail telling us that they would send us the box if we could provide appropriate verification information. Of course, they would send it to us via FedEx, which was a bit concerning…

Anyhow, the result of all of this is that the packaged arrived at our house today. Again, it is 62-pounds, so it is sitting on our front stoop right now Assuming it doesn’t get stolen, it should be interesting to dig through its contents to see what survived and what has been destroyed by rotting lemons. More on that later.

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By daniel_jacobson, March 5, 2011 3:05 pm

I have finally summoned the intestinal fortitude to write about our most recent shipping mishap. Here is the backstory…

On Christmas day, the three of us were to fly from San Francisco to Ft. Lauderdale to visit family. The expectation was that Florida would be warm. From there, we were headed to DC where forecasts were projecting massive snow storms and cold weather. We were going to be gone a total of 10 days, heading back to the bay area after New Years.

Traveling with Maya is already less than ideal, especially given that she requires a ton of extra stuff, like a stroller, toys for the plane, etc. Consequently, we did not want to bring more bags with us on the place carrying things like winter jackets, sweaters, boots, etc. Instead, we had the brilliant idea of shipping it ahead to DC so it will be there by the time we arrived. Moreover, since we were already shipping stuff, we decided to also put a bunch of other stuff in the box, including a stereo receiver, hand-me-downs for Allison, some other electronics and a big bag of fresh lemons hand-picked from the lemon trees in our yard. Sounds like a great plan, doesn’t it?

We shipped this package on Friday, Christmas Eve, with an expected arrival date of Monday. We then left for Florida without a worry. A few days later, we touched down in DC and ask my parents if they received the package (at this point, it was Tuesday). They hadn’t. A tad concerned, I called FedEx, expecting that the holidays tied it up a little. We also looked at the tracking for the package. It turns out that the package left the Redwood City FedEx location on the 24th, went to the Menlo Park location, then carried on to Oakland the same day. That was the last stop. FedEx, meanwhile, has no record of what happened next and they have no idea where the package is.

Let me take a moment to explain to you how amazing it is that they lost this package. It is not as if the box was branded and indicated that it could be some prize for someone to snag, like an Amazon package. And this was not a small package that could easily take a walk without anyone noticing or that could be hiding in some corner of the warehouse. Rather, this was a large 65-pound box that stood about 2.5 feet tall, was incredibly cumbersome to move, and looked like it had been shipped a few times already. The only thing that suggested that it was worth stealing was the fact that it was large, that it was shipped around the holidays, and that we elevated the insurance level a little. But it does seem clear to us that it went missing due to bad intent.

The only solace we have at this point is in imagining the look of that poor thief’s face when he opens his prize and sees a bunch of beat up clothes, some crappy electronics, kids apparel and a bag of lemons coating all of the other items with an everlasting sour odor.

As a side note, after doing some research, it seems as though FedEx loses almost 1% of all packages! That is astonishing to me! UPS, while better, still has a high error rate of about .5%.

(I should also report that FedEx did pay out the insurance money pretty quickly and even refunded us the amount of shipping.)

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By daniel_jacobson, January 8, 2011 7:13 pm

For those of you that might remember my episode with the glass in my foot about two years ago (culminating in multiple surgical procedures to get it out), last night was the reprise…

Maya and I were playing in the living room last night. Afterwards, I started walking into the other room when the big toe on my left foot caught a rogue toothpick that was caught in the carpet. And by caught, I mean the toothpick went straight into my big toe about 1/4 inch and then snapped off inside.

Given the complications resulting from the glass episode, I decided it was better to spend three hours in Urgent Care in Palo Alto to get it removed professionally.

Again, better my foot than Maya’s. That said, better no foot than mine!

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By daniel_jacobson, January 8, 2011 7:49 am

We can now call ourselves California residents… Today, a
4.1 earthquake registered just southeast of San Jose
(http://www.examiner.com/natural-disasters-in-national/magnitude-4-1-earthquake-rattles-northern-california).
Interestingly, I did not feel the quake even though I was only a
few miles away in Los Gatos. I was in a meeting at Netflix at the
time. The topic of that conversation must have been very compelling
because almost everyone else in the building felt it.

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By daniel_jacobson, December 12, 2010 5:10 pm

After a few weeks as California residents, we have already seen quite a few differences. I already wrote about the garbage/recycling/compost removal. Other differences include the harsh 60-degree California winter and the fact that everyone here will talk to you if you show a hint of interest in talking to them. All of these, however, were expected and well-advertised prior to moving here.

There is one difference that we didn’t expect… The number (and size) of the spiders! They are all over the place, with monster webs that stretch for yards connecting virtually any two things that don’t move much.

This nasty-looking orange spider was hanging out in a corner near our front door. It was about 2.5 inches including the legs and looked as though it could be poisonous (at least according to very very novice eyes).

I found this spider, perfectly silhouetted against the sunset, just dangling on it’s web between two trees that were about 10-feet apart. My best guess us that this one is 2 inches.

When looking at vacant houses prior to the move, I can’t tell you how many massive spiders in huge webs I almost walked into in their backyards… Eeewww!

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By daniel_jacobson, December 5, 2010 8:32 am

Earlier this week, our new house finally got Internet access (thanks to our friends at AT&T). It took them three weeks to set up, which is completely insane, especially when you consider the previous tenants used their service. Three weeks to flip a switch… In their defense, AT&T did tell us it wouldn’t be set up until December 1st and a major holiday did fall within that time frame. But seriously! Anyhow, what’s done is done and we are now connected.

First order of business with the new connection is to set up our TV-based technologies. For those that don’t know this, we haven’t had cable (or comparable) for about eight years. Instead, it has been rabbit ears and supplemental media (most recently Netflix, even before the change in jobs).

The rabbit ears actually took the longest time to set up. Finding the right spot in the room took multiple attempts, each of which required a 30-minute scan of the channels to see how good (or poor) the reception would be. Once that was set, I moved on to the TiVo, which didn’t take long. Finally, I set up our new AppleTV, which was provided courtesy of my great friends at NPR who gave it to me as a departing gift. That setup was a mixed bag.

Connecting the device to the tv was a breeze (after a trip to Best Buy for yet another HDMI cable). But connecting to the wifi was surprisingly inelegant for Apple. Not a big deal, but it really is annoying to scroll around looking for letters. It reminded me of setting up my name in the arcade game Track and Field – the one with the roller ball. Anyhow, once set up, the disappointment continued. Yes, I can use the device to stream Netflix, which is great. But there is also some amazing content available there, most of which is pay on demand, similar to the iTunes model. I knew going into into it that AppleTV is set up like that, but I expected a lot more free content. And I thought it would be much easier to find the free content. All of this provides more validation that the Netflix subscription approach is right on the money…

So, I am thrilled to be connected again! But so far, my AppleTV experience is subpar. More on this later after I play with it more.

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By daniel_jacobson, November 23, 2010 5:55 am

One of the simple things that makes me smile is the way California handles trash (at least relative to DC). First of all, there are three distinct bins compared to DC’s two. Second of all, we have a compost bin! Finally, of the three bins, the biggest (green) is the compost bin, the medium sized one (blue) is for recycling, and the smallest (black) is for garbage. That’s right, the smallest bin is for trash.

Go California!

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By daniel_jacobson, November 15, 2010 12:57 pm

It has been a bit since my last post, but obviously, things have been pretty busy over the last week. Thanks to Jenn for the reminder to update the log…

Since my last update, we have actually moved into our new house. Well, all of our stuff is there but we are sleeping in the hotel. We expect to get enough unpacking done tomorrow, however, to move in for good. Maya loves her new room too. The first time she saw the house, she ran upstairs to stake claim to the room that met her rigorous standards. Once determined, she jumped on the floor with glee, rolling around and giggling the whole time. Needless to say, a better reaction than we expected!

Finding a school is the next big hurdle. Andrea has seen quite a few already. We hope to have that solved in the next few days.