I moved into my new place this past weekend.  Still unpacking and discovering the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, I got sick right after the move, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying out the restaurants and asian supermarkets in Chinatown.

One of my primary motives for moving here was to be closer to good food, so I hit up a chinese friend who used to live in downtown LA.  Here’s his take on eating in Chinatown.

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Here are some good eats around your neighborhood.

I had a foodie coworker who loved this sandwich place (I thought it was just ok):

http://www.yelp.com/biz/mendocino-farms-los-angeles

The grand central market is a good place to pick up cheap food and fresh groceries.  There is this Korean grocer towards the front of the market who has the freshest fruits at low prices:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/grand-central-market-los-angeles

My foodie coworker gave rave reviews for their Pupusas:

http://laist.com/2009/03/19/recession_obsession_the_pupusa.php

There’s a Farmer’s Market at the Bank of America building (one block north of McCormick’s).  It has some good food.  My favorites are the Hawaiian Chicken (sooo salty and spicy) and the bacon-wrapped hot dogs.  The market comes to BOA on Fridays.  The same market also sets up shop in front of the Central Library, but I forget what day it is:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/downtown-la-farmers-market-los-angeles

The best sushi IMHO is R23 (though I’m no expert, YMMV):

http://www.yelp.com/biz/r23-los-angeles

Thousand Cranes has a cool roof garden restaurant.  A nice place to take the parents to for brunch:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/a-thousand-cranes-los-angeles

All the white folks love this Yang Chow place.  It is ok.  It is slightly better than Hop Li.  A good place to take white people who aren’t ready for Sam Woo:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/yang-chow-los-angeles

My favorite thing at Sam Woo is the BBQ crispy fried noodles.  Mmmmm soo good.

People will tell you to try Water Grill or the Patina inside the Disney Concert Hall.  They’re overhyped, don’t waste your money.

After a while, I just ended up driving to Monterey Park for food.  Chinatown chinese food is kind of substandard.

Two big missed opportunities this weekend because of car trouble.

My white ’95 Honda Civic is my first (and only) car. Got it the summer after high school. It’s been through 3 major accidents — twice declared totaled and registered as a salvage vehicle.  But I’m still alive and have traveled over 150k miles in it. I’m on my 4th hood. All in all, she’s been good to me.  If my Civic was a cat, then it died its 4th death today.  But I think the Civic’s got one (or five) more lives left in her.  She’s a frugal trooper. We’ll know more on Monday when the shops open.

Starting a few months ago, I noticed that the car would run a bit hot and when I checked the coolant reservoir, it would be empty.  So every week or so I’d refill the reservoir with coolant.  The mechanic I brought the car to couldn’t find an obvious leak, and since there didn’t seem to be other problems, I kept up with the weekly workaround.

But last night, the problem escalated itself.

Heading up to Oxnard on the 405 last night to see my friend Amy before she left town again, the temperature started rising rapidly around Skirball Center.  I pulled over to check the coolant levels — bone dry.  Uh oh.  Better check the radiator too seeing how wisps of smoke were floating off the engine block.  After waiting 15 minutes for the engine to cool down, I opened the radiator and found it bone dry too.  Double uh oh.  So I filled it up with nearly a full bottle of coolant and got back on the road. I headed north thinking the problem had been licked for now.

Not 5 minutes later, I found myself off the road again with an overheating car.  Filling the radiator with water at a Denny’s, I noticed that a puddle was forming below the car.  There was definitely a leak now, and it wasn’t small.  This is when I figured I wouldn’t be able to make it all the up to Oxnard and back.  So I turned around to limp back home. Ugh. (Sorry Ames, I’ll make it up to you in 6 months!)

Having to stop 3 times on my 20 mile trip back home – each time waiting 15 minutes* for the engine to cool enough to open the radiator cap to add another gallon of water — I figured I wouldn’t make my flying appointment with Thanos this morning.  Double ugh.

* On the bright side, I’m now almost finished with Brad Thor’s Path of the Assassin because I’ve been sitting around so much. This Scot Harvath series is not bad.  My only gripe is that Secret Service agent Harvath is too perfect.  A little depth please.  But as far as paperback thrillers go, it’s got enough bad guys, shooting, and international intrigue to entertain me.

When I tried to start the car, the lights came on but no sound came from the engine.  That’s when I called AAA and snapped this picture.  I wanted to get a shot of the engine/hood on the left with a bunch of cars rushing by on the right.  But not wanting to die for a stupid picture, I opted for this less dramatic picture. :)

The rest of the story is uneventful. A tow truck from a AAA affiliated shop comes by, tows me to Source, and I borrow my sister’s Camry. AAA was super easy as usual*.  Just hand over the card and sign. Maybe tip the guy if he makes nice chit-chat.

* Sometimes I think AAA is not worth the price. But then when this happens and I need to be rescued from the side of the road, or I leave my lights on and need a jump (at least once a year, usually around the first rainy days of the season), I don’t want to think about the hassle of not having AAA.  So yeah, AAA is worth it.

My new Dell desktop machine arrived today.  I decided to go with a Windows desktop as my new everyday computer.

BTW, my friends and twitter survey of Win vs. Mac came out almost exactly 50/50.  I didn’t expect that. I thought it’d be Mac heavy.

What pushed me over to the Windows side was how unbelievably cheap desktops are.  Plus! There was a 35% off $1600 coupon at Dealnews.  Got a T3400 and 24″ 2408WFP monitor for less than $1200 shipped.

Tellingly, the first thing I did after Windows XP was configured (which took less than 5 minutes btw), was launch IE to install Chrome and Firefox.

I probably should have opted for the Vista pre-installed, but I wussed out and chose the XP pre-install with free Vista upgrade later.

I still need a new laptop for work though.  Still eyeing the Macbook (Pro). The smaller 13″ version this time since it’s not going to be my primary. That’s a better size for carrying around too.  But netbooks are getting crazy cheap at around $300 so I’m considering one too.  And they have normal sized keyboards now.

Why does eBay go out of their way to piss off their users?  This is what happens when you’re huge and there are no competitors. You end up pissing off customers and not putting enough energy into trying to delight them.  Why bother trying to make users happy when you don’t have to?  Afterall, they’re already paying customers, and they’ve got nowhere else to go.

Reminds me of Microsoft in the 90′s. Why fix IE when there are no real alternatives?  That attitude led to Firefox, which of course led to massive UI and security fixes implemented in IE7 and now IE8 in an effort to stop shedding marketshare.

Until there’s a Firefox to eBay’s IE, all we can do is rant publicly. Here’s my story to add to the cacophony of “eBay sucks” rants.

90% of the time, selling on eBay is fine.  Things work as expected, and I don’t want to tear out my hair selling on the site.

The remaining 10% of the time, though, when there is a glitch, it’s incredibly frustrating.  Not because of the glitch itself — stuff happens, I understand — but it’s the lack of recourse that’s incredibly frustrating.

I got one of eBay’s inexplicable error messages today, followed up by the classic “add insult to injury” way I feel like eBay likes to treat its users.

Situation:

I want to edit a listing to add shipping options.  Simple.  I do this everyday.

Problem #1:

When I go to submit my changes, I get this error:

Please provide the correct information in the highlighted fields.
Please enter a valid value.

But there are no highlighted fields!

Here’s the screenshot of the error message.  If someone can point out which “highlighted field” has a bogus value, please tell me!

Just to make sure it wasn’t my changes that were triggering the error, I clicked to revise the item, but did not make any changes, and then hit submit.  Same error with a totally unrevised listing.  Um, ok. WTF?

Got the same error on both IE8 and Firefox 3.

Problem #2 (compounding the frustration):

There’s a nice little “live help” link in the upper right hand corner of the listing editing form.  Great!  In theory.  When I click on it though, the chat box is stuck “loading”. I waited about 2 minutes, then retried.  Same thing.

By this time, my blood pressure had reached a boiling point.  I was going to punch my monitor if I didn’t rant somewhere, so here I am. I wanted to make a 30 second change to one listing.  When that didn’t work as expected, and not being able to reach customer service to get help for my inexplicable error, I came to vent here instead.

Resolution:

Other than end the listing and create a new one?  None I’m aware of.

I suppose trying again tomorrow, and hoping the glitch has been fixed, is one way to go.

Since I no longer work out of a real office, I find myself looking for coffee shops or cafes with free WiFi. Public libraries are also a good option. Libraries have the advantage of being quieter and the disadvantage of not having any coffee.

Lately I’ve been frequenting two cafes near my house, but I’m looking to expand my options. Not that those places aren’t cool, I just need a change of scenery (and food). Starting with the list at WiFi Free Spot, here’s my crib sheet of places I’ve used as my freelancer’s office.

last updated 2007/07/28

Culver City

• Rumor Mill (11739 E. Washington Blvd.) – The Rumor Mill is a cool, hipster hangout for coffee, sandwiches and laundry. Yes, laundry. Half of the shop is the cafe; the other half is a self-service laundromat. Interesting concept. The food here is pretty decent. I like the Golden Chicken sandwich which has tangy, oozing goat cheese. The best thing? They’re open until 10pm daily.
• Dolce Vita Cafe (4410 Sepulveda Blvd.) – Dolce Vita is a mom-and-pop cafe and bakery. Their soup and sandwich combo is my lunch staple. I like the Chicken Caesar sandwich and their homemade mushroom soup. For breakfast, the Eggs Benedict with avocado and ham on a croissant is tasty. The soy lattes are perfectly made here.

Pasadena

• Lovebird’s Cafe – Yes, even single people can hang out here.
• Pasadena Public Library (285 East Walnut St.)

The internet is down again. Damn you Time Warner!

This week, the reorganization (or really, organization) of my life has been foremost in my mind. I started applying GTD principles to various areas of my life. So far, I’ve broken it down by personal and professional arenas. I don’t really have a system in place yet, as I’m trying to actually organize my life and not get bogged down in evaluating various tools. (And there’s a ton of GTD related tools to research!)

So far, two actions have been very rewarding emotionally.

1. An empty inbox – I went through the last few inbox items in gmail, and archived everything else! 760+ message gone. Poof. It’s scary, but incredibly liberating to see an empty inbox. I wasn’t ever going to reply to those messages anyway, and starting from scratch is a good way to help ensure I stay on track. (Many previous attempts at reorganization have failed even before they really got started.)
2. Writing down everthing on my mind. From little nagging errands to far-off pie-in-the-sky projects, and everything in between, I’ve tried to get it all off my mind. I’m just using a plain text file on my laptop. It’s not the most efficient method, and I’m sure my system will evolve (maybe I’ll join the Moleskin crowd), but it’s great for the initial collection process because I could get started right away with something super simple. That was key.

As I process the “in” collection, I just move the line to a different part of the plain text file — action lists in context. These lists are evolving. My initial impulse is to make too many context lists. I’m simplifying and finding out what would work well going forward. I’ve been conciously trying to keep the system as simple as possible, and as integrated into my normal routine as possible. I know I’m just going to abandon it if I have to change my behavior radically.

I’m not done with the collection process yet. I need to do it at Rhythm — the sphere with the biggest “pile” of open loops. I can’t wait to have an empty inbox in my work email too!

I wish I had a big chunk of time to dedicate to a complete initial collection, but real life beckons and there are fires to fight every day. So my GTD initiation is a gradual process, but I think the key is that I’m now mentally ready for this “spring cleaning”.

I’ve been trying to get my life back to some semblance of order, and GTD is a major part of the plan.

The 3 key GTD concepts that should help make me stress free, highly productive and personally “get it together” are:

1. Get all todos and ideas out of my head.
   Put these pending thoughts into a system outside my head so I don’t keep wasting cycles on the same thoughts.
2. The 2 minute rule.
   If it will take less than 2 minutes to do an incoming item, then just do it.
3. Read inbox items only once.
   An extension of point #1, this point means having empty email inboxes and getting rid of the really long, never checked, monolithic “todo” list.

None of those things are actual actionable implementations, but they are the key points guiding my life reorganization. I’ll share my actual implementation when I get that sorted out.