ang*e

[15:19] turtlegal82: wow this iphone launch is turning into an epic fail
[15:19] thisgirlangie: :)
[15:19] thisgirlangie: what's up?
[15:19] turtlegal82: have people forgotten how to plan things?
[15:19] turtlegal82: first firefox, now this
[15:19] turtlegal82: the servers are still down

Today I was an epic nerd and found myself at the Palo Alto Apple stores at 6AM in the morning, and also standing in line for literally hours for the new 3G iPhone with my coworker Jill. There were many bugs on the operations side of the 3G iPhone launch, but the atmosphere at the Palo Alto locations at least was very upbeat.



3 and a half hours and $200 later, Jill has a new 3G iPhone!



Jill using her new 3G iPhone with the cool iPhone covers we gave out this morning:



More pictures from today

I used my dcam to take a video of the line at the Stanford Shopping Center Apple store at around 8AM this morning:



And seriously, can the flowers in the cement planters at Stanford Shopping Center be more annoyingly perfect?

Photo credit: Terry Chay

[17:03] thisgirlangie: oh
[17:03] thisgirlangie: http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v284/212/74/3502094/n3502094_30196212_7464.jpg
[17:04] jenn: haha it's the fake face tilt downward
[17:04] thisgirlangie: ?
[17:04] jenn: looking up
[17:04] jenn: it's a way to look not fat
[17:04] jenn: it's a trick
[17:04] thisgirlangie: ha.
[17:04] jenn: if you don't want ever to have double chins in a photo, always tilt your face slightly downward
[17:04] thisgirlangie: omg
[17:04] jenn: and look up

Wow. This is what I get for neglecting to pay attention to women's magazines growing up.

Here are some of my favorite tweets & pictures from the June 26th Geek Dinner AKA Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #2: Sponsored by Facebook.


Tweeted by: Sarah Mei at twitter.com/sarahmei/statuses/845065570


Tweeted by: Cyan Banister at twitter.com/cyantist/statuses/845107524


Tweeted by: Cyan Banister at twitter.com/cyantist/statuses/845108773


Tweeted by: Heather Gold at twitter.com/heathr/statuses/844598497


Photo credit: Vanessa Naylon


Photo credit: Vanessa Naylon


Photo credit: Vanessa Naylon


Photo credit: Vanessa Naylon



Photo credit: Jessica Palopoli

My pictures from the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #2 are here. The venue was pretty dark, so my pictures didn't come out too well.

Thanks for our photographers Jessica and Vanessa, and to Cianna and Facebook for videotaping the event. I'll post the video here when it comes out.

3 Cheers for Girl Geeks of all Stripes and Spots!

Went to a dinner party in Mountain View put on by one of Ben's salsa teachers at Google. Was reminded that whenever you put the salsa kids together, there is some dancing to be had. It's like swing kids, but salsa kids...

So this is bachata dancing. Here are some videos on how to dance bachata I found online. Seriously, MC Hammer's DANCEJAM is getting more and more disappointing to me every day. Such high hopes...



I thought this was cute. The boys got tired (it was like midnight) so Daria led PeiPei in dancing. In salsa, usually the guy has to be a good leader and the girl just follows. But apparently Daria is a good lead as well, more girls don't ever learn to lead (AKA learn the guy's moves). I personally think it's hard enough to learn the girl's side - all that twirling ties me in knots, literally!



Practice makes perfect, right? Time to hit more salsa clubs in the city. We were watching the salsa competition in 2005 on video -- the salsa team "JR & Emily" were smoking hot! She was wearing a 50s flapper-style dress to dance in, unlike some other girls in salsa competition who wear skirts reminiscent of drive-thru car washes.......

I'm thinking of buying these shoes:



So they will match my seafoam-green iPod nano:



Is that so terrible? My current running shoes look like they went to hell and back.

We had the most amazing time hiking with llamas, thanks to George Caldwell and his llamas (www.experiencellamas.com) who came out to Redwood Regional Park in Oakland for the Saturday, March 29th hike. Yes, George and his assistant drove 8 llamas from Sonora (2 hours north of the bay) in 2 regular-sized vans down to the verdant hills of Oakland for the 16 person hike. Isn't it amazing how they fit in vans?!!

Anyway, I had invited all my local friends (and some non-locals who I hoped could make the long-distance trek for the love of llamas) to the expedition but only a few could make it that weekend. Some got discouraged by the East Bay Regional Park website's cumbersome registration system, and others couldn't commit to registering weeks ahead of time (the event sold out).

It was so worth it. You get one llama for every two people! I was so jazzed. We learned to pack the llama, feed it, care for it, pet it (not on its head tho!), and we learned so much about them. About how they spit only in extreme circumstances, like, if another llama sniffed its butt (the offended llama will spit forward, not backward, and an undeserving soul will be spitted on). So we kept the llamas apart to avoid unnecessary spitting. However, my llama spit on Chris and Jenn's llama -- cuz their llama got in my llama's face. That was HYSTERICAL. Llamas spat at each other and never spat on us humans. You know, us humans who kept hugging them and taking pictures with them.



The hike was 4-6 miles of the French trail in Redwood Regional Park. It was GORGEOUS. The previous day saw lots of misty rain but no heavy rain, so Saturday morning at 10AM saw lots of mist in the fern-dense forest. It's hard to put into words how magical the area is. George was super friendly and taught us random fun things, like how a circle of redwoods (we were looking at one) means they had sprouted from one big redwood that was logged (the area had been logged before). We had our lunches (which the llamas carried easily) at a picnic site, where lots of passer-byers took camera pictures of the llamas. It must be a curious site to see! Half a dozen llamas chilling in the middle of a park.

***

Anyway, that was Saturday. On Sunday, I had brunch in the city with some girls in tech, then convinced Ben to drive to the city to meet me and go to the San Francisco Zoo. After the tiger-eats-boy hubbub, I was very curious to see this zoo I heard so much about (I read the SFGate.com comments... terrible I know, but it was interesting to put an ear to the ground). Plus, interning at the Taipei Zoo for a summer really gave me perspective on zoos and how they work. So we went and bought $11 tickets each at 4PM for a zoo that closes at 5PM on Sundays. I really believe in supporting this zoo, so whatever. And seriously, those tickets are CHEAP! I am used to big entertainment places like Disneyland and Universal Studios, which also promise a day of fun, and I can't believe the upkeep of so many animals can be funded with such low ticket prices. It's excellent though, because it also allows EVERYONE to come and enjoy the zoo -- bring the kids! But I digress.

I liked the giraffes in their barn, because it was really windy that day. A lot of the animals were hiding or inside because of the wind and chill at 4PM, but we saw some primates. I love the emperor tamarins -- they are so Dr. Seuss-ical!! And they're super animated and inquisitive, they keep angling and turning their heads side to side to look at you.

I saw the polar bear sleeping (I love their big paws) and visited the grizzly gulch but didn't see any bears. I loved the penguin exhibit, how they have all these apartments/cubbies, the hose blasting water, and even their own Zen rock garden!

The most interesting exhibit was the tapir, with its long snout that moves! It was eating in a back corner of its exhibit, in what looks like an aesthetically bleak space. Ben said, "The tapir should have more tropical plants in his environment" and then I started wondering if I could like, give the tapir a tropical plant -- the way people give each other flowers or gifts. I'm Twittering with the SF Zoo which made me giddy with excitement when I got a lead on how to make this happen. We shall see...

Found this on Etsy.com rather randomly, and just had to buy it. "I bought a stuffed angler fish today on Etsy.com!" I told the boyfriend. "But what's an angler fish?" he asked.

I did a Google image search on "angler fish" and some fun stuff came up:



Angler fish in real life and as drawn by a kid.



Would you like a Tonky wall sticker of an angler fish for $35 (small) or $55 (large)?



This cool angler fish shirt can be yours for only $25!



"So I went from OMG, my son wants to be an angler fish for Halloween, I have three days left and I haven't even started! .....to idea, design, prototype and finished two hours later. Here it is. (I'm pretty impressed with myself) There is a mini glow stick on the end of the bait pole." (Found on a message board about Halloween costumes)



Your favorite angler fish can also be polka dotted, apparently.



A recipe for grilled angler fish with avocado and bouillon.

The guy's eye-candy on Cashmere Mafia too! (IMDB listing for Val Matt Emmich)

Everytime I see this:



I think of this image:



Makes me wish I were an open-source developer :*(

There's a website I rediscovered today. It's called Sk*rt and it's basically "Digg.com for girls"



I remember like a year or two ago, I wanted to make Digg for girls. SOMEONE ACTUALLY MADE DIGG FOR GIRLS!

Kudos to Sk*rt! I posted the Women 2.0 Business Plan Competition to their site and it is being ranked up -- I don't know their rhetoric for improving the popularity/ranking of a posted item is yet, but check out the comment I got to the post. It's true, a community site is only as good as its members.

I really like this site and I hope the growing user base will feed good tech and business articles relevent to women! Please join me at sk*rt and help make their content damn good, because TechCrunch and Digg and Valleywag are so overrun with chauvenistic comments that are never moderated. Technology doesn't have to be all about looking at women as escorts or the dates of rich Silicon Valley men. Seriously. Good ol' girls club, anyone? 

Women 2.0 Business Plan Competition
Deadline to Submit: April 1, 2008

More details at http://pitch.women2.org

Teams with at least 50% female ownership are invited to submit their business idea on a 7x7 inch paper napkin along with a business plan. Finalists pitch to a top shelf Silicon Valley VC Judging Panel at the conference on May 10.

read more | digg story




Click here to Digg Women 2.0! :o)

Today I went to a swanky Yahoo! event at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco. The goal of the event was to preview the new shine.yahoo.com website to women bloggers and relevent people. There were 2 "break-out sessions" -- am I the only one who cringes with anticipated ennui at words like "break-out sessions"? -- where we critiqued the Yahoo! site for women, and then listened to a panel of mommy-bloggers, Lisa Stone of Blogher, and Brandon Holley of Yahoo! Shine (formerly editor of Jane magazine). It was strange being in a room of self-proclaimed, self-realized bloggers -- listening to them talk about the power of blogging, et al. I started blogging in 1999, writing HTML in AOL Press in high school here. In freshman year of college, I hand-coded a blog as well. I joined LiveJournal in 2001 to begin what remains my most personal blog, thanks to their privacy features and my friends who have stayed with me on LiveJournal through the years. As the Internet and Google have grown more popular thru the years, privacy issues became important so hence the migration to LiveJournal's friends-only blogging feature for the meatiest blog posts.

Above: High school blog (1999-2000)

Above: Freshman year blog (2000-2001)

People find it disconcerting that I use many different services for many different things. Xanga became my art/movies blog, Tumblr holds my feminist thoughts and rants, Pownce holds my more technical friends, Flickr holds the San Francisco Bay Area crowd, Picasa holds another different San Francisco crowd and more Google people, Facebook I keep around for its usefulness in marketing my Women 2.0 and Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner events, Twitter I use because my social networking -abhorrant sister actually uses... and I try to SuprGlu them all together at one place. It's not perfect, but I'm too busy juggling 7 other projects that working on my own domain doesn't seem so important. I guess I'd rather be a Level 5 leader dedicated to boosting other women who deserve it, instead of a pseudo-celebrity/egocentric leader that is all about them. I just finished reading _Good_to_Great_ :o)

But I digress. I was sitting at this event this morning thinking about all these BLOGGERS. I never think of myself as a blogger. I found myself raising my hand when they asked "who is a blogger?" because I do blog and hold lots of them. But I'm not a blogger. I identify more with "rabble-rouser", because I say things that piss people off and I do a some things that people commend me for doing, like kicking off Women 2.0 by asking Noah Kagan why his Entrepreneur27 events and conferences had no women (at which point he put Shaherose, Wen-Wen, Shivani, and myself together at Facebook HQ for lunch and the first Women 2.0 meeting). I organized the 1st Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner because there were ZERO in the United States but a dozen internationally, because it just had to be done. I was thinking just now that if anything, I guess people would also label me as an "early adopter" for new technology websites (and definitely not gadgets, I'm a luddite with gadgets). I joined Yelp in September 2005 while exploring the ecosystem at my first job in the Valley, and enjoyed TechCrunch and Valleywag in their inchoate days. Now the only things that get me to lift an eyebrow are feminist thoughts, like why are women VCs visibly declining in numbers - where do they go? Why are there so few women speakers at tech conferences, similar to Lisa Stone's motive for Blogher - "Where are all the women bloggers?". Why do the editors of TechCrunch and Valleywag put up with chauvenistic and immature comments littering their blogs? Don't even get me started about Valleywag's choice of pictures of women - sometimes I thought I stumbled on an old issue of Playboy online rather than a "tech gossip rag". But I digress.

Today I met some girls who might be able to help me start that conversation, on how to possibly right an obvious wrong, by uniting forces with other groups and putting our collective minds to the matter. And I'm still waiting for a Feministing alliance to pop up in SF!

I love the energy, enthusiasm, and passion in these women!

I remember years ago, I saw llama hikes scheduled in Oakland's Redwood Regional Park but never got around to assembling a group of people for the hike.

Now, where can I find a llama hike or a llama trek?!

Big tent:


Photo Credit: Erica Lucci

Good food - sushi, veggies, fruits, and an open bar:


Photo Credit: Erica Lucci

Inside there was a big stage:



With an even bigger Girl Geek Dinner sign:



I was slightly terrified of public speaking:


Photo Credit: Erica Lucci

But my panelists are awesome and diverse, in their personalities and jobs:



In fact, Leah practically has a fan club:


Photo Credit: Dana Wu

Where did she go? Here's our post-event speaker/moderator/organizer picture sans Leah:





Post about the BAGGD event: http://www.women2.org/?p=51
(we can never get WordPress's pretty permalinks to work correctly on our server. ever.)

Press release -like article on Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners.

You can pretend you were there! Here is more than one hour of me talking, Ellen Spertus talking, and the panelists:

My new clear plastic umbrella got all bent out of shape by block 2 of my 4-block walk to the BART station this morning, leaving me sitting with soaking-wet jeans and socks all morning. Seriously.

Here is one amusing quote I got from the San Francisco Chronicle this morning:

"Coming from Chicago, I'm used to the wind, but the ocean makes it more exciting," said visitor Helen Whittiker, who was taking photographs of herself and three friends leaning into the wind at a 30-degree angle.

Ben has posted 300+ of our pictures (including videos!) to a Picasa photo album here.

This is our vacation at-a-glance.



Day one on Negril's 7 Mile Beach - reaching out to wildlife.



Petting its head-feathers...



This is me laughing hysterically after one touch quickly sent its neck into its body.



Mysterious bird that looks like a pterodactyl.



After walking down the West End of Negril, it started pouring suddenly so we stopped by the Rockhouse for drinks while we waited for the rain to pass.



The sun trying to break through afternoon rain clouds.



We could make a book of postcards out of the scenery at Negril.



Half Moon Bay, Jamaica.



Spiny lobster at Booby Cay. I don't like their legs - they look like spiders.



Ben likes the lobsters. And the bugs. And the lizards.



Super cute polka-dotted rocks like this are scattered all over Booby Cay.



"Love bugs" -- because they're perpetually mating! They run amok at Booby Cay.



3 Dives in Negril had the best steamed conch. Soooo good.



Trees wearing sweaters at the Royal Palm Reserve in the Great Morass.



The Great Morass -- the one by Negril. There is more than one Great Morass in Jamaica.



I look like my mom in this picture taken at sunset at Negril.



I got certified to scuba dive! This is my first time -- learning to equalize.



Ben got certified in Thailand years back, so this is him taking a self-portrait while I slowly descend.



Look at the vast difference in the shapes of our eyes o.O



Stingray in hiding. We watched it lift off and swim away too.



Petting a huge fat sea cucumber. Ben calls them underwater cats.



Cute how coral grows on knots in the buoy line.



Bat condominiums in the caves by Roaring River.



I thought it was super cool how the river rises from beneath (you can see it bubbling).



Blue Hole Gardens.. our self-appointed tour guide helped us thru the barbed wire for a vsit b/c it was after open hours.



Curried goat at Sips n Bites in Negril, Jamaica.



Treasure Beach was apparently hit badly by Hurricane Dean.



Treasure Beach (Calabash Bay) as view from Jack Sprat.



Black sand beaches are Treasure Beach's trademark.



Cute little red-and-black urchins hide in the holes of rocks.



Climbing the idyllic buttonwood tree that is the hallmark of Treasure Beach.



Ben and me sitting in the buttonwood tree at Treasure Beach.



This is my leg bleeding after cutting it on coral.



Ben after he learned to not slip on the seaweed and coral in the reef.



Cute fish that looks like a bee - it's black and yellow striped!



Sitting in a pirogue heading out to Pelican Bar.



The crab wants my food at Pelican Bar! It's funny how crabs are pests in Jamaica.



Pelican Bar at sunset.



YS Falls on the Black River in Jamaica.



Guy helping Ben get momentum for the rope swing.



Oy vey...



Ben trying desperately to swim to the waterfall but the force of the water is too strong.



Late at night, we reach the Blue Mountains. Pretty.



What the Blue Mountains look like in the day.



Ben super fucking excited to get going hiking. I don't get it.



Stuff growing in the tree we saw hiking in the Blue Mountains.



And by hiking I mean walking up the mountain's highway - a one lane road.



Things grow EVERYWHERE in the tropical rainforests!



View of Kingston from our perch in the Blue Mountains. Kingston is the capital of Jamaica.



We did a 1.2 mile hike in the Hollywell National Park. This is a pretty shot Ben took. In fact, 95% of the pretty shots are what Ben took. I didn't bring my camera, we just used his camera to take 1000+ pictures.



The Blue Mountains are gorgeous even at night.



Reading Middlesex at Mount Edge while waiting for our ride to Long Bay.



Mount Edge's gardens. It used to be a coffee plantation or something.



Ben hates this rooster - it kept yodelling at 3AM til 4AM every night.



Driving out of the Blue Mountains on that windy tiny road - even off-roading it in a van where the road got washed away - that was terrifying. Nerves of steel...



Ben swam across the Blue Lagoon, unaware that barracuda live in the waters. I rented a kayak so I could explore the Lagoon too.



A view from the kayak on the Blue Lagoon.



Kayaking out of the Blue Lagoon into the ocean, and to Monkey Island.



Cute rocky island (like, 5 years wide) ride by the opening of the Blue Lagoon.



We were standing on the tiny beach on Monkey Island in the water, and this school of fish were swimming all about our legs. Ben bent down and took a picture with his d-cam (he has a water case for it).



The tiny beach on Monkey Island.



Another super cute, and tiny, rocky island by the Blue Lagoon.



Ben exploring the lagoon next to the notorious Blue Lagoon.



Ocho Rios is home to Dunn's River Falls, which is like Disneyland for Jamaica. It's damn touristy.



Our tour guide took this picture, and 239487298347 others of us. If we weren't looking cozy enough, he'd motion with his hands that we should closer, then he'd take the picture - both horizontally and vertically with our d-cam.



Our last night in Montego Bay, we stayed at the Altamont West which was a pretty nice hotel - because we'd been backpacking, we'd been staying at super-cheap places for most of the 2 weeks in Jamaica.



Doctor's Beach Cove at Montego Bay on our last day in Jamaica.



The funky clouds as seen from the plane as we jetted from Jamaica to Miami.



Seriously funky.



They don't have clouds like this in California!



Cuba. One day.

Angeline's wedding was yesterday in San Juan Capistrano -- pictures are here. Time to drive back to the Bay Area from LA now...