Jason Wong

That’s the last time I do my own server administration. Really. I broke a cardinal rule – “Never perform a software upgrade 30 minutes before an all-night poker game.”

Long story short, I’m on the typo trunk, which is both more responsive, and stable than the previous version I was running under. The next step is to move this puppy from the computer under my desk to Rimuhusting .

The theme switched from Bird Flu, to Scribbish, which is a lot cleaner. I’m going to read into implementing a liquid layout over the template this weekend.

Finally, I’m looking forward to another Rails-based blog – mephisto, which is currently powering the Ruby on Rails weblog. If they add a couple key features (tags, spamblocking), I might switch.

I have to wonder if the “Paris Hilton Benefit Act” is what Lakoff was thinking when he wanted to reframe the debate.

From the optimists at Capitol Weekly.

Is it wrong to still be a pessimist on this race? The Democrats stopped him cold on 73-77 and Schwarzenegger’s approvals are still in the low 30’s. What gets me down about this is that the Angelides-Westly polls swung 15 points from TV ADS, and Schwarzenegger owns the pulpit. I’ll need to see Schwarzenegger get nailed a couple times hard before I feel like the aura of invincibility has worn off.

In the continuing effort to shove even more money into Steve Jobs wallet(the Macintax), I saw Cars this weekend. While all of the Pixar movies are great, I’m noticing an ever-so-slight decline in the quality of the storytelling. The story seems to drag a little bit, the jokes don’t seem as sharp, and it’s not until the last 20 minutes that everything executes perfectly, like you would expect in the early Pixar films. Am I a curmudgeon, now that I’m 30?

I remember Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and A Bug’s Life having incredible stories and scripts most of the way through. I noticed a slight decline in “The Incredibles (9/10 for me)” as well, but figured it was because John Lassetter wasn’t directing. While this still blows away anything Dreamworks comes out with, I’m hoping they get back to their old, flawless form. Cars gets an 8.

1. BluRay – 25GB & 50GB recording capabilities for completely backing up my hard drive on 2 BluRay discs. Sony just put its $3,499 BluRay laptop up for pre-release sale, so Apple should follow by January MacWorld, at the latest.

2. Robson – 64MB-4GB Flash memory for booting in seconds, rather than half a minute. Availability: next year.

3. 802.11n (forgot this one!) – The promise is for bandwidth rates of up to 540mbps, which is cool – but not that useful, since we’re limited by the speed of the cable/DSL connection, but not bad for internal data transfers. The important piece is the 2-8x increase in range. Sweet.

4. Maturity – In the 5 months since the Pro came out, and Apple has had more than 4 revisions (2 months ago, they were on Revision E). Over time, Apple works out kinks in each revision – such as fan noise.

5. Important Universal Binaries – A lot of my company’s work requires the Adobe Suite, and the Universal Binary that will come with Adobe CS 3 won’t be available until 2007. Speed is your friend, and running CS2 on a 2 Ghz MacBook under Rosetta is 60% slower than on a 12” Powerbook. Blechhh.

6. Virtualization – VMWare is releasing its software in the next 6 months for OS X, although Parallels just went Gold. I’ll look out for reviews of the last version, although the last release candidate wasn’t stable.

7. Buyer’s remorse – I bought my 17” PowerBook in November. Ouch. I bought the 15” Titanium, 3 months before the 17” Powerbook came out, in November. I got the 17” Powerbook in November 2005, 3 months before the 15” MacBook Pro came out. Ouch. Steve Jobs knows when I’m about to buy a new laptop, and hates me. Punk.

7. Leopard & iLife 07’ – Save $129 on a next-generation OS and $79 on iLife. I’m guessing Leopard availability in Summer 07’ and January 07’ for iLife. Ok, this one’s really just more buyer’s remorse :-).

The newspaper of record disputes the value of a Harvard MBA. Sweet, sweet vindication.

It looks like I’ve passed Murlene Randall for 13th place, which means David Wong, Deputy Sheriff is still almost 2000 votes ahead of me. By the time all the votes are counted, I’ll have at least 10,000 votes.

Latest Updated Election Results

Asian Dating is a free dating site for Asian singles, and not coincidentally, the first startup to come out of the team at i5labs. Ballot Designation: Asian Dater.

Please help me get this off the ground by linking to the site, telling your friends, or even better, signing up!

I’ll write more about the business model, and future plans next week. There is a method to this madness. Trust me.

7. Loan Shark
6. Repo Man
5. Mortician
4. Falun Gong Member
3. Mud Wrestler
2. Tackle Dummy
1. Random Inanimate Object

First of all, thank YOU for supporting me. I could not have done this without your help. This has certainly been an incredible experience, and I can’t begin to tell you the mental agony and exhilaration that comes with campaigning. It’s awesome. Thank you.

I received 8,245 votes, taking 14th place. To take 13th, I would have needed 8,260 votes, or 16 additional votes. To overtake David Wong, who took the 12th spot and made the County Central Committee, I would have needed 1604 votes.

3 issues REALLY hurt me:

a. Ballot designation – businessman. Most people see only the name and ballot designation. I didn’t realize how badly this crippled me until I actually saw the physical ballot. Wow. Change it to small business owner, and I go from being “the man” to a pseudo underdog. That has to be worth anywhere from 200 to 1000 votes. Of the non-incumbents, I was defeated by a Neighborhood Outreach Director, a Teacher, a Deputy Sheriff, and a Labor Attorney.

b. Bay Guardian Endorsement – People argue over the value of this actual endorsement, but I believe it’s worth at least 3-5k votes. The Guardian is the progressive newspaper of the Bay Area. Many believe that in the conservative 12th AD, the value is negligible – but I disagree. If there’s any newspaper that’s looked at for endorsements, it’s the Guardian. Unless the Chronicle or Examiner counter it, people will see it as a “fair” source of news for progressive politics, and there are more in the 12th than you think.

One day, campaigning outside Lakeshore Elementary school, there were at least 4 parents (out of ~ 40 we talked to) who said they just voted the Guardian slate. If I’m right, it means that for non-incumbent positions, you’ll need the slate endorsements + the Bay Guardian endorsements to win in the future (assuming the endorse a decent number). Roy Recio picked up 6,167, with the Guardian endorsement, and some hard, retail campaigning. The three non-incumbents, Melanie Nutter, Trevor McNeil, and David Wong all won the Guardian endorsement, plus they had the endorsements of the moderates. The Guardian spoke to a couple people for recommendations on endorsements – they never spoke to candidates.

c. Labor / unions. This was suggested by Gabriel. I can’t actually calculate this, and it may or may not be as strong as the Guardian. Michael Theriault almost only had the support of labor, and received 6,634 votes. Melanie received Local 2, and I’m guessing Trevor and David Wong did as well. See reason a.

Many people thought I ran a good race, and I did everything I could knowing that I didn’t want to let any of you down. Near the end, though, I wasn’t feeling confident how the cards were playing themselves out. To win this race, you had to play as a progressive and a moderate.

Ok, enough strategy, let me tell you how I feel. Surprisingly good. A bit sad at times, but I’m not discouraged – I know exactly how I lost, and I can change parts of that. Next time, I’m going to spend more time in preparation. I entered this race late, and I have 100x the experience that I did at the beginning of this race. Yes, there’s going to be a next time. I’ve got some basic infrastructure pieces in place, and am going to add some additional pieces.

My friend and running mate Trevor said to me yesterday morning, “Do you realize you just voted for yourself? How cool is that?”

Incredibly fucking forking cool.

The final five day crunch is INTENSE. I’ve mobilized every volunteer to spread the word, and we’re distributing close to 1000 postcards a day. Start at 7 AM, end at 9PM.

There’s a bit of fear coursing through my veins, driving me forward in the final push. I’m seeing a fairly large spend from other opponents, and if there’s anything that’s definite, it’s that the SFDCCC race can be a bit of a crap shoot. My advisors tell me I should feel comfortable, because of my endorsements, the slate cards I’m on, the mailer, the team behind me, and a number of other factors coming together. I don’t.

Fear leads to stress. Stress leads to pimples. Argh.

Final push. Let’s go. Please vote for me on June 6th, and if you can volunteer, drop me an email. If you’d like to know more about me, feel free to read more.

Lowell High School celebrated it’s 150th birthday last night. There were attendees from the class of 1949 to the class of 2007. I caught up with many of my old teachers, classmates and friends.

There were a number of Lowell performers displaying talents, including theatre, music, and ROTC, who had an impressive drum and march display. As much as there’s furor in the city, they reallly showed their best. It’s notable and commendable that Lowell’s ROTC allows gay students to be open about themselves.

3 showed up from the Class of ‘94 which was a medium showing.

After an eternity in election time (1 day), I received a postcard for Jason Wong for Democratic Central Committee. I’m incredibly biased, but it seems to stand out among the pieces that hit the mailbox today. In other news, my site threw a rod with intermittent errors today, and I’m left wondering if that’s because the mail piece hit 13k homes simultaneously…

Argus is watching. I can rest a little easier.