Tretakoff Musings

I just have to say, Bill Simmons' Grantland has matured and blossomed: it has become a staple for me for funny, insightful sports and culture related reading. If you are a fan of good writing and sports, there is frankly nothing better out there. Some examples, just from today: The staff of Grantland published a recap of the emails exchanged between the staff during yesterday's NFL Championship games.  "The move to hire multiple ex-Oz cast members to shill for insurance companies fascinates me. We're one step away from Simon Adebisi holding a machete to somebody's neck until they tearfully agree to switch their renter's insurance."  "I'll be shocked if Gronkowski doesn't have a sizable role in the Expendables sequel."  "How severe a neck injury would Peyton Manning have to suffer to keep him out of commercials? I think it'd take a full decapitation, and even then he'd probably still get in some New Era ads." 

With this weekend's NFL title games, it seems the subtext is the spectre of the rematch between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants in the Super Bowl. Bill Simmons sums it up best with his column today : Q: Since you never answer my long thought-out mailbag questions, I'm going to ask you a simple one. What you and your dad gonna do when Patriots vs Giants II runs wild on you? Could a new Level of Losing be created? — Pat Frappier, Ottawa SG: Why do people keep sending me (or any other Patriots fan) this e-mail? Here's a newsflash: If the Patriots make it to the Super Bowl, we ALL want the Giants. Don't you realize that would be the best possible way to extinguish every awful memory from Super Bowl 42? And that we'd have a chance to do it in Indianapolis, the scene of the other Super Bowl that got away, when the Pats blew a 20-point lead to the 2006 Colts and gakked a third-and-3 that could have ended the game (and led to a trouncing over Rex G

Count me as one of the fans of the exploding gourmet food truck revolution: the quality of these lunch or light dinner bites, combined with the short term availability, make them a compelling draw for me. Here in SF, we have amazing choices, like the Bacon Bacon truck, the Rib Whip , and An The Go , among dozens of others. One of my favorite parts of the summer was the Friday night Food Truck Crush at the Larkspur Ferry building: 5 or so of the region's finest, lined up to tantalize me with their offerings as I disembarked from the City. Delicious. Recently, the food truck phenomenon is getting a little uglier. Traditional restaurants, paying rent for fixed space in a desirable location, are seeing their customers siphoned off by trucks parked just outside. Free economy, right? Sure, but these trucks are sometimes coming to the same spot daily, staying for hours, and taking up parking and commerce spots, in some cases obscuring the storefronts of their competition. Restau

I have always enjoyed Google's ease of use and almost intuitive response. Lately, however, I have been getting more and more frustrated with the quality of the results...as it pertains to date. I know Google is trying to give me the best match to my text, but with the sheer quantity of user generated content (UGC), recency is becoming increasingly as important. For example, take this recent search for "best waterproof cycling gloves:" Now, note the first result. The date of it? 2007; 4 years ago. Just underneath it is an other result that one would think would be more of a direct match to my search query, and at least that is in the last 12 months. And note the 2nd result: it looks to be a direct match. The date? 2010, a full three years later than the first result. Now here's the problem: Google may think that I really wanted to learn more about why my search is fruitless (look at the first result there), but I want to see the results themselves, with more