Lee.org

At first I watched this video because it’s another Crucible thing, and an Exploratorium thing.  Then my heart welled up in my throat.

I’m lucky enough to be able to go and shake Nick Diphillipo’s hand, and Steven Young’s hand and say “thank you”.

I just signed up for an Alaska Airlines Bank of America credit card. I looked over the literature I got about fees and only after a third look was I able to find the annual fee because of this evil page break:

That is uncool, Bank of America.

You see, about 2 years ago, new consumer protection laws went into effect, making it so that credit card companies were required to inform customers very clearly as to what fees they would be charged. This is the first I’ve seen of credit cards trying to chip away at that law.

The Crucible has the chance to win a $25,000 grant from State Farm for our Bike Program, and you can help. All you have to do is vote on Facebook every day between today and April 22.

Click here to vote  on State Farm’s Facebook App. (You’ll have to give the application permissions, but only the first time.) After that, all you have to do is click “vote” to lend your support for Bikes for West Oakland, and it’s super easy to click 10 times in a row.

The Crucible’s Bike Program serves our West Oakland community with Bike Fix-a-Thons, Earn-a-Bike, Art Bike, and a drop-in repair times. This year six Bike Fix-a-Thons will enable at least 300 of our neighbors to access free repairs. 20 students in Earn-a-Bike will learn how to weld and explore other industrial arts in order to fabricate two bicycles and keep one — bikes are donated to community organizations and toy drives or sold to support the program. And Art Bike participants conceive and create unique artworks from frame to finished project.

The Crucible’s Bike Program was one of 200 causes (from over 3,000 entries) selected, which is a huge honor, and we only get funded if we reach the top 40. So please take a second to vote (or 10 seconds to vote 10 times), share with your friends, and check out The Crucible’s Bike Program in person soon — there’s something here for everybody.

Thanks!

If you want to join me at to a free weekly yoga session each Wednesday morning at The Crucible in Oakland (conveniently 2 blocks from West Oakland BART), send me an email. This isn’t open to the public but if you’re a friend, you’re welcome.

A little bit about the sessions:
Run by Roxanna Shohadaee, doing Vinyasa Yoga, there is music and the room is lightly heated. I’ve been twice and quite enjoyed it.

The Feedly RSS Reader for Chrome should not be trusted. Since they are cheating to get signups, it’s impossible to say what other bad things they are doing behind the scenes with your data.

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The face of spam keeps changing. It used to be email, then blog comments, now it’s comment stuffing (as in “ballot stuffing”). Look at this screenshot and tell me what you think looks fishy:

Let me give you a hint, the exact same comment was repeated word-for-word by over 40 different people in the review section of this Chrome Extension.

I know it’s a near impossible task, but you should always be on the lookout for fake people (AKA Sockpuppets) recommending products. I reported this incident to Google but it’s happened a lot before and it will happen a lot in the future.

An Obituary for CELLspace (via) Go to the original site for pix and other good writings!

CELLspace, community arts center, closed its doors at the end of 2012.

During the late 90s and early aughts, there was no better place to see the Mission District’s artistic, multicultural vibe than CELLspace. San Francisco prankster Chicken John was known to decorate the 10,000 square foot warehouse as a Las Vegas casino; the Flaming Lotus Girls created their first large scale fire installations in the CELLspace Metal Shop, and during Carnaval, the space would burst at the seams from the ritual drumming, colorful rattling costumes and sheer number of teenagers involved in groups like Loco Bloco and Danza Azteca.

Michael Sturtz was so impressed by CELLspace that he named his industrial arts school, The Crucible, after their art gallery.

“The name was inspired by the Crucible Steel Gallery, which was the CELLspace gallery at the time,” he said.
Continue reading ‘RIP CELLSpace’ »

This is completely amazing, my good friend Molly Carocci has received the highest honor possible for a civilian, she has been appointed Poet Laureate of Cheese Weasel Day by the esteemed Cheese Weasel committee!

Visit CheeseWeaselDay.com to read the whole story!

I’m honored to see that the esteemed committee discovered Molly’s poetic talents from my own blog!

Join me for the Crucible’s spring open house, it’s free! 10a-4p this Saturday April 6th.
Email me! Check out the online flyer.

You may have heard through the grapevine that Megan and I are getting married!

Now we’re looking for engagement and wedding jewelry! It’s quite appropriate for us to either make it ourselves or have it made custom by a local jeweler. If you or someone you know can help with either of these ventures, we’d love to hear from you!

She said yes!