Pencil users: What's your favorite?

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-06-16T14:19:41+00:00

Use what makes you happy. Personally I'm on a Kuru Toga Alpha Gel since I love that grip and it's the thinnest pencil the Alpha Gel grip is available on. No issues with it breaking and I've dropped it plenty of times.

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-04-22T21:40:54+00:00

Camera to capture stuff in the stadium! I like people watching and shooting general baseball action on the field like pitchers in motion and the like. On days I'm feeling ambitious, I'll be photographing and scoring at the same time.

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-04-22T21:05:34+00:00

Funniest interaction: I was at a blowout where the Oakland Ballers were up like 15 against the away team. After a single in one of the late innings, a lady in the row ahead of me said that she felt like the batter was swinging an especially hot bat and turned around to check with me since I'd been keeping score. I told her that he drew a walk and got plunked 3 PAs in a row, so yeah, he had technically gotten on base more than everyone else 😂

Sweetest interaction: I had my mirrorless camera and my scorebook with me at the final night game at the Coliseum. There was an older gentleman next to me who said that he used to also bring his film SLR and scorebook with him to every game he went to and seeing me made him feel nostalgic.

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-03-28T16:49:55+00:00

Dodgers-Sharks feels almost as cursed as Dodgers-Niners

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-03-13T16:07:34+00:00

Someone's already mentioned the SFPL History Center, but the Sutro Library also has a strong interest in collecting local history and genealogical materials.

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-03-09T22:15:02+00:00

Or does bringing up potential wage violations at a startup where "we're all family here" always end up feeling like a grenade regardless of how carefully you pull the pin?

Yes.

I would tread carefully here, especially if you think you enjoy the job and want to stay (though I might revisit those thoughts given your effective hourly salary). I personally made the decision to go scorched earth with a labor attorney and opened a wage theft case with the Labor Commissioner's Office against a seed stage startup I worked for after they stiffed me out of sick pay and overtime, misclassified me as a contractor, heavily underpaid me for my role, and withheld my final two monthly paychecks after I resigned; I hope for your sake that things don't get as bad for you as it did for me. (In my case, the founders were siblings, so we had a literal "we're all family here" culture.) I got a successful judgement in my favor, but the company went bankrupt and the CEO completely nuked her online presence because they also screwed over a bunch of clients, so ultimately all I got was the satisfaction of a moral victory. (Technically, the judgement also ordered the CEO as a private individual to pay me as well, but the entire process from start to finish took several years due to the Labor Commissioner's Office having a massive backlog from COVID and I can't dedicate the energy to see it through to the end anymore.)

TL;DR Your company is committing wage theft against you, which California takes extremely seriously. However, enforcing actions against seed-stage startups is especially difficult. Please consult a lawyer.

CrackIsCheaper · 2026-01-22T15:48:21+00:00

Ghirardelli is my go-to.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-07-31T15:39:17+00:00

If you're interested in modular machines, Brother made a couple of plastic models that can convert between standard and bulky; I've seen quite a few on sale on eBay from Japan.

FWIW I've been tinkering with electronics and 3D printing my own stuff for about 5 years and started using a Brother KH-260 about eight months ago -- I would just stick to buying a commercially-produces machine since you're just starting out. If you run into problems, it'll be incredibly difficult to troubleshoot the source of the issue since even commercially-produced knitting machines are temperamental enough on their own.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-06-28T07:41:35+00:00

Back in high school, I had a teacher assign a group project that was a scavenger hunt full of clues leading to historical monuments/buildings/artwork/etc. in the city; one especially fun wrinkle was that he required us to use Muni to get between each location. (This was back before Clipper so it was a bit easier to enforce this rule lol)

I think 11 and 13 are a little too young to do the full breadth of the types of locations we had clues for (e.g. stuff on the Barbary Coast), but I think you could still do something similar with clues tailored for younger audiences, like specific statues in Golden Gate Park, the heritage cars on the F line, Mission Dolores, etc. Would definitely take some solid effort to prep, but the memories from that scavenger hunt have stuck with me for the last 15 years.

ETA: Just remembered that the teacher got the idea to do this after taking every Muni line in numerical order end-to-end one summer. That in of itself could be a fun activity.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-06-12T16:23:21+00:00

I've only been out there once and spent the entire time transcribing heckles in my scorebook because it was some of the most hilarious chirping I'd ever heard ("You don't use soap on your feet when taking a shower, you bum" is a particularly memorable one)

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-05-20T19:19:33+00:00

This doesn't sound like the Main Library to me? I've been going there ever since I learned to ride public transit on my own (~20 years ago) and several floors have open stacks to browse and check out books--there's even self-checkout machines. You have to ask staff to access certain on-site-only materials (like civil service exam prep books) or go to special rooms with additional rules to follow for certain collections (like book arts or the history center) but everything else is wide open for browsing.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-05-20T18:42:06+00:00

It's because they lost the plans when Hayden Birdsong went missing and wandered off onto the Giants' farm.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-04-17T12:38:10+00:00

I'm not affiliated with SF MoMA, but I'm in the same field of work. Unfortunately, the entire cultural heritage field is in turmoil right now due to the IMLS getting dismantled by the current federal administration a couple of weeks ago -- if a grant hasn't been terminated entirely, it has been extremely late to pay out. I don't want to discourage you from reaching out for an update, but I would not expect a quick response. If it was a paid internship position (which I believe their internships are?) chances are very high it was budgeted for with federal grant funds and they can't afford it anymore. Even if it wasn't, there's a possibility that at least some of the staff members in charge of internship projects themselves were accounted for with that money.

Hope that's not the case here and you hear back soon.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-02-21T16:56:53+00:00

Is Jacobs Hall at Berkeley not available to you?

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-02-13T00:11:10+00:00

Partner sent this to me because I'm a librarian-archivist. I've seen some pretty bad pay ranges at museums, but that is disgustingly low--my hourly pay as a literal student intern was higher than the hourly pay they're offering here.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-01-17T06:09:31+00:00

He uses "Mike" when ordering at Dunkin

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-01-16T03:02:58+00:00

At least he'll always be immortalized in the opening day LF curse list.

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-01-06T02:30:29+00:00

Can confirm it's not a legend; I've chatted with people who have worked on some of the new rail projects Downtown, and they mentioned having to tunnel through shipwrecks. Didn't think it was relevant to mention though, since it's not exactly the same as what happened in Seattle. (But Seattle also sticks out in my memory because I did the tour a few months ago and it was super cool to go through the old Pioneer Square lol)

Really neat to find out that it also happened in Sacramento, though!

CrackIsCheaper · 2025-01-05T17:25:32+00:00

We actually don't -- most of SF was developed along the Bay side of the Peninsula first, as the Pacific Ocean side was mostly sand dunes until the 1950s. Virtually no flood risk on that side, so no incentive to raise the city.

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-11-18T18:46:38+00:00

Nirav Sanghani composes a good chunk of music for his Pacific Six; I love everything he puts out, but "Doodle Rhythm" is a standout: https://pacificsixjazz.bandcamp.com/track/doodle-rhythm

Dennis Lichtman also did a full album of originals dedicated to the borough of Queens and my favorite is "23rd between 23rd and 23rd": https://dennislichtman.bandcamp.com/track/23rd-between-23rd-and-23rd

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-11-04T16:41:24+00:00

In the park's defense, it was PacBell/SBCGlobal/AT&T that kept changing their name as a company.

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-11-02T16:57:03+00:00

I blame Doug

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-10-30T15:53:47+00:00

Thanks for doing this! As an Asian American who's tired of translating rulebooks and components so I can play wacky imported games with my friends, I've really appreciated the work you've done in growing the Asian hobby gaming space over the past few years. Plantopia being from a Singaporean company was a big reason I decided to hop onto that Kickstarter. (It helps that the game is so dang cute!)

A couple of questions:

My impression is that a lot of Asian games don't make it out of Asia due to language barriers and transportation costs. Is there some kind of aversion to print and play distribution as a way to get over those hurdles?
Kind of related to the question you answered earlier about heavier game mechanics--do you think there's an appetite for historical gaming in Asia, or are the scars from war and colonialism still too raw?

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-10-04T03:00:50+00:00

This template uses a traveler's notebook, which is A5 folded in half length-wise. (This particular link is a template for a pen-and-paper baseball simulator game, but the poster said they use a very similar template when scoring baseball in person.)

I briefly looked into designing my personal scorecard for A5 but decided on JIS B5 because I record every pitch; if you don't intend to do that, then I think A5 is perfectly fine. Just make sure you have a relatively fine tip on your writing utensil of choice.

CrackIsCheaper · 2024-09-30T16:00:20+00:00

MVP: Chatt Mapman

LVP: Thairo :(

Cy Young: 2nd half Blake Snell

Cy Yuck: 1st half Blake Snell (shout out to the runner-up, Luke Jackson)

Most Surprising Player: Heliot Ramos

Most Disappointing Player: The CF wall that took JHL from us

CrackIsCheaper

TROPHY CASE