Another Christmas gift from Teresa (this past Christmas) - I love this Genesis box set! It’s kinda hard to argue the value of what you get with Genesis 1976-1982 - complete remasters of every album, both in CD and 5.1 DVD-Audio, video interviews with each band member regarding each album, other video goodies and an extra CD & DVD of songs from the era not found on albums. Not sure when I’m going to get around to 1983-1996, but I’m anxiously waiting for 1970-1976.

This one is way overdue, and as such I do want to reiterate that all the bits are decidedly not in any sort of order, other than “random”. Depending on how you look at it, you might say this is another two-fer, as both are my parents are great in their own right. Without having to acknowledge the obvious, it’s really hard to imagine what my life would be like without them. Exceptionally supportive and generous, I honestly don’t think I would be anywhere near where I am today without them. I’m very, very, very lucky.

It took me a while to get around to asking my friend Jim to use it. Despite the fact it was taken on Jim’s camera, this photo (which captures them really well, I think) was taken by our friend Andy’s wife, Joanne.

No picture to share here, but there’s no way I can’t share OpenTable.com. Online restaurant reservations with the ability to accumulate points for redemption for vouchers that can be used at (guess where?) restaurants that use Opentable? Pretty easy sell. Better yet, they’ve been really good about having a wide presence - we’ve even used them for reservations in Vancouver.

Wow - I’m finally caught up from my flu hiatus! Whew! Looking forward to just posting one cool thing a day instead of two! That said, I hope you guys (all two of you) are enjoying this project - I know I am.

OK, I’m feeling a little guilty about doubling-up the stick-shift photo from the R32 the other day, so I’m going to do a two-fer the other way (two awesome bits for one). What we’re looking at is one of my Christmas gifts from Teresa in 2006 - a Garmin Nüvi 350 GPS unit. I was traveling a lot for work at the time and this was an indispensable asset to have on the road (figuratively and literally). LOVE THIS PRODUCT!

The other half of this two-fer is the mounting mechanism for it. The only problems I’ve had with the Garmin (fortunately, I suppose) are with the included add-on bits - the car charger and the mounting bracket that adheres to the windshield by suction cup. Both have broke within the first year of ownership. Not cool. Fortunately, the power connector is a standard mini-USB port, so getting the corresponding tip for my iGo adapter was a cinch.

The other issue took a little more investigation. Ultimately, I would settle upon ProClip (pictured without the Garmin in the inset picture). It’s a great solution - especially considering it looks (and feels) permanent, but doesn’t necessarily have to be. The pieces that connect with the car’s panels do have an adhesive, but I’ve found that since the mounting pieces are designed to wedge into the seams it’s not necessary to use the adhesive. Added bonus: Apparently it’s illegal in California to use a suction mount on your windshield. No worries here!

It’s the little things: the drive home taking only 1 hour and 2 minutes (usually takes me 15-30 minutes longer). I know, I need a shorter commute.

Clement Street is an interesting experience. Mostly a little Chinatown, you can find some really unusual jewels - and it’s great since it’s a short walk from our apartment. One interesting place is Troya, a great little Turkish restaurant. Good food and pretty inexpensive to boot.

Another jewel on Clement, Green Apple Books is a fantastic independent bookstore - the kind where you can wander around forever coming across cool and unusual books. One of the best experiences I had with this store was one night when I checked their inventory for a specific book online, walked down and bought it. Amazon can’t beat that!

My iPhone. I bought Teresa and myself iPhones on Tuesday, right after the Macworld keynote (wanted to be sure they weren’t coming out with new hardware). I had a love/hate relationship with my Treo 650 (first time I really did - needless to say, it was a bit weird). I haven’t had the iPhone for very long, but aside from getting used to typing on it, it’s been smooth sailing.

It might not have Bluetooth Dial-up Networking on it, but I think I’ll be OK without it. I have to say that even though I was on Sprint’s slower network with the Treo, AT&T’s EDGE data network has been surprisingly slow to me - not tremendously, just that I was expecting to have roughly the same performance. Maybe it does, and it’s just perception - I don’t know. Even still, I don’t miss the Treo and certainly don’t regret getting the iPhone!

The twentieth awesome bit would be decent people trying to do the right thing while doing what they want. The example of such a person would be the guy on the right, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of both Patagonia and what eventually became Black Diamond. (The guy on the left would be me, who’s just trying to do the right thing while also trying to do what I want).

On Tuesday (1/15), Chouinard was doing a reading/talk at Palo Alto’s new Patagonia store. I’m really happy I went, even though the line to have him sign your book was ridiculous - it was a good talk and really inspiring. He’s a really nice guy to boot (as you might imagine from the photo).

Part of his presentation was about working with Doug Tompkins (founder of both The North Face and Esprit) on establishing a national park in Patagonia. He mentioned that there’s a nameless, unclimbed peak within the property they’re preparing for the park and he’s thinking of putting the opportunity to “bid” on naming rights on eBay for $1 million dollars as a fundraiser. He joked (or was he serious?) that if no one won the auction, he would name the peak “Mt. Paris Hilton” (not sure if he meant a double-entendre) - he figured that threat would be motivation enough to get someone to successfully bid.

I have to apologize for the two pictures today, as they’re essentially the same. Thing is, there are two awesome bits illustrated on the stick shift and there really isn’t any other way I can think of showing them.

The first awesome bit would be the fact that the R32 is all-wheel drive (VW’s moniker for this feature is “4Motion”). One of the main reasons I wanted this car is because not only does the all-wheel drive translate into unprecedented handling, but it also means not having to deal with tire chains when heading up to Tahoe. I only had to put them on the Passat twice, but that was more than enough to convince me that AWD is the way to go (if you like to head up to Tahoe in the winter, that is).

The added bonus for us in San Francisco is that the 2004 R32 is the shortest car lengthwise that has this drivetrain.

The second awesome bit to this shot would be the sixth gear - or as my friend Andy refers to it, “Oh yeah, I still got one more left”. I guess this means that I have at least one thing in common with Robert Redford - I’m an eco-conscious person with a bit of hypocritical aspect to my personality.

OK, just to warn you, the next few items are going to be car-related (what can I say? I love my car!). This would be the aforementioned car cover. Custom made for the car model, my father and I tweaked it a little more in order to use it in San Francisco parking permit territory (that is, the windows for the parking permit and license plate).

I know this is a bit on the ridiculous side, but I really like the little bit of protection it affords the car until we figure out a garage situation.

When you don’t need or want to put the car cover on but still want a little extra protection in the parallel-parking game, you can’t beat the Bumper Badger. We saw this one night on an Audi A4 across the street from our apartment and were hooked. Their website is a little dodgy-looking, but the company is trustworthy. No new car that’s going to be parallel parked should be without it.

Came across the coolest trick for the iPhone today - basically a way to use the new Web Clip feature in the latest firmware to have speed-dial icons on the home screen. There actually looks to be two different approaches - the one as described in the body of the post actually isn’t the method I’m using. Scroll down to the comments and check out the contribution from “xfrosh”. Simply download his script (”Save link as…” or similar) and follow the instructions in his comments.

I’m a little apprehensive about referring to it as a “hack”, as that implies you need to jailbreak your phone to do this. Refreshingly, it’s just a bookmarklet that tricks Mobile Safari on the iPhone to dial the number. No risk of bricking or voiding your warranty!

I’ve just started playing around with it, so I’ll post a screenshot when there’s something decent to look at.