There are two things that I'm very picky about. My keyboard and my chair. I'm still looking for that perfect keyboard (oh what I'd do for one of the Apple Design II keyboards in mint condition), but I can cross the perfect chair off of my list at least.

I've owned two chairs from Herman Miller (including the Aeron) and the CXO Chair. All of them said to be award winning chairs for their design and comfort. All were excellent chairs, but I had pet peeves with all of them that eventually made them unfit for the heavy hours that I'd put into them. I'm in my chair for 10 to 12 hours on most days. What feels great after one 8 hour day may start to become painful after your seventh 12 hour day in a row.

The Zody Chair is the first chair that doesn't have some design quirk in it that would cause me to have to compensate my posture to get comfortable after extended use. The adjustability of the Zody is awesome. I'm really able to mold it to fit my body, something that was not totally possible with any of my other chairs. It has all of the adjustments you'd expect out of a premium task chair, but there's one that's done so cleverly that I have to call it out.

Like a lot of chairs, you can adjust your seat back tension to adjust how easily the chair or the back of the chair tilts backwards. This is usually done through some spring on the bottom of the seat pan where it's hard to reach and impractical to adjust frequently. They put the seatback tension in a crank on the side of the chair that you can adjust very easily throughout the day to give your body some relief from being in one position for too long.

They really tout their super adjustable lumbar support, but really I'm not sure what all the hoopla is about there. You can isolate your lumbar support by adjusting a dial for right side tension and left side tension. The problem is that I can't figure out exactly how much tension should be applied per side and I have a Master's Degree in Physical Therapy. The other thing is that the settings on the two sided lumbar support don't stay. I've toyed with the left and right side adjustments only to find that the settings slip back to their defaults a few days later.

The Zody is built with a slightly flexible seatback that gives it a kinda flimsy feel. I'm used to my chairs being built like tanks from top to bottom so I have to admit I was a bit concerned about the worksmanship of the chair when I felt the seatback bend a bit. I knew it was that way by design, but it was still disconcerting until I sat in it. It really makes a difference when you're leaning back in your chair. It supports your back, but allows you have a little bit of natural movement from side to side so you don't have to resort to slouching if you find the rigidity of your "ergonomically perfect" chair tiring after a long day.

My only real complaint about the chair is that one of the adjustable armrests is a bit loose and moves too easily. It hasn't been a problem, but it is a bit annoying sometimes.

Finally, if you want to get one of these chairs, you might want to see if you can find a local office furniture dealer who carries them. I found a local salesguy who sold me a fully loaded chair customized with my pick of trims, leather, and fabric for at least $300-400 less than what you could find it for through online discounters. If you're in the Silicon Valley or East Bay area, contact me and I'll give you his contact info.

I know it's getting colder now, but with ice cream this good, who cares? Ok, for those of you who are a bit more temperature sensitive, they also have desserts and coffee drinks there. I've tried the Srawberry Fresca Gelato, Cafe Mocha Gelato, Lemon Sorbet, and Strawberry Sorbet there. The two strawberry flavors were my favorite, but all were simply excellent.

Everything we tried was rich and distinct in flavor and some were not as sweet as I expected it to be. That's awesome for those of us who think flavors for dessert should be something other than sweet, even sweeter, and too sweet to eat, but if you're there to feed a sugar habit, make sure you get a taste of a few items first. There'll be plenty on the menu that will satisfy your sweet tooth.

Speaking of flavors, they have some unusual ones as well like Lychee, Green Tea, and some other ones that I can't remember. In addition to the frozen desserts, they also have baked dessert items and boxed premium Belgian chocolates. They just opened so perhaps by the time anyone reads this, they'll have other things added to their menu as well.

It's about time that Downtown Campbell had a top notch dessert spot and to boot this one's not bad as a hangout either! There's free Wi-Fi, comfortable couches, good lighting, and they just featured local musician, Kaila D'Sa last Thursday.

The dinner social we had at Blue Mango last night was my second time at the place and both experiences were excellent! We had the spicy garlic beef, the chicken yellow curry, and some kind of mango shrimp salad last night. The mango shrimp salad was the only thing that didn't suit my fancy.

The food there is very flavorful, reasonably priced, and the staff is very friendly. It's Thai food with a touch of fusion. It's a must try if you like Thai.

When I heard that there would be an Olive Oil store opening up in Downtown Campbell, it struck me as a curious place, but I didn't think I'd ever end up shopping there. Sure, they had around 20 different varieties of Olive Oils, but just how great could it possibly be to warrant an entire store for it?

Ok, I'm eating those thoughts along with a few bottles of their olive oils from their taps. The thing I never understood until now is that the olive oil you get at the supermarket isn't exactly "real" olive oil. The real stuff is a seasonal product that is fresh and has a lot more flavor in it. It tastes especially awesome if you're a fan of dipping with bread.

I never thought I'd care about the grade of olive oil I was getting, but now that I've tried the stuff at the Olive Bar, it'll be hard to go back because everything else just tastes like crap.

BTW, in the interest of full disclosure, the Olive Bar is a client of mine. I did their website.

Mary and I went to this very trendy looking fusion restaurant in Cupertino with my family a few weeks ago on the recommendation of my sister. Despite it being Sunday evening, the place was packed and there was a fifteen minute wait to get a table. The owners of the restaurant are Singaporean immigrants themselves and already own other restaurants in the area.

Water spouting "Merlions" welcome you at the front and rear entrances of the restaurant and a very hip looking cocktail bar with widescreen HD TV's make Merlion a fusion of modern and traditional decor as well as a fusion of cuisines. It all seemed very promising.

Then they seated us and it all went downhill from there. They didn't have any room indoors, so they sat us on the front patio that faces the scenic traffic of Stevens Creek Blvd. Our table wobbled and our seats were obviously chosen for how they looked rather than how they felt when you sat in them. They were slightly more comfortable than say if someone replaced your bike seat with a ski. Unless you have extra padding, one side of your pelvis kept falling through the large slats in the chair.

Then there was the anxiety over the water spouting Merlion. I'm no bacteriophobe, but I just couldn't stop thinking about how great it would be if a strong wind blew and I could get my dinner coated with some delicious bateria infested water from the large fountain about 10 feet away.

Ok, so how's the food, you're probably thinking. We had differing opinions about the quality. We had differing opinions about the quality, but it definitely came late, came wrong, and forgot to come. The wait staff there on that night could only be described as the 18 stooges... They delivered to the wrong tables, forgot orders, and just generally appeared completely lost to the point that one guy came out with one of our dishes and stood there staring blankly as the wonderful mobile like movement of cars humming down Stevens Creek Blvd. We actually called out to him, but the cars sound like the ocean if you're standing in the right place. He was in his happy place, holding a plate of somewhat warm food. We called again and he snapped out of it and came toward our table with our food.

The only bright spot I could see in the experience is that the food was very artfully presented. If you like food that looks good, they get high marks. Call me picky, but I want my food to taste good too. Some of it did. Some of it tasted pasty and less than warm.

To be fair to the restaurant owners, they did show up in person and appeared to very sincere in their apologies and took one of the entrees off the bill. It was also only a couple of weeks since their grand opening and they just lost one of their managers so things were really screwed up. I'd like to be sympathetic, but its hard for me to believe that you can get a comedy of errors this spectacular by a perfect storm of dumb blind bad luck alone.

Mmmm.... bacteria infested fountain water!

If you're programer, you have to read this book. Maybe you'll learn something in it. Maybe you won't, but you'll feel a whole lot better about every programming screw up you've ever made after reading this because this book shows you how people who are probably smarter, richer, and more talented than you end up making the exact same mistakes you make and suffer from the same frustrations that you have with that bug that just wont go away.

To a programmer, this book reads like a slasher horror movie. You have moments when you think, "No don't open that door" fully knowing what's about to happen. When the inevitable carnage comes, I found myself chuckling with elation that I was far from the first person to ever make that mistake.

Perhaps because the product he was covering in the book never made it to completion in the time he had to write the book, Scott Rosenberg fills the pages with lots of programming anecdotes and aphorisms from the short history of computing. The result is a book that's informative, entertaining, and a easy read regardless of your degree of technical literacy. Although programmers may find this book especially entertaining, it's clearly written for a general audience to pose the questions: Why is software so hard to make and why are programmers and programming culture so odd?

He doesn't give a specific answer to these questions in the book, but in radio interviews with him to promote the book, he provides a very succinct answer. It's because good software is artwork, but unlike artwork, it's not enough for it to be beautiful or shocking. You have to turn it on and it has to work. It's a paradox of something that has to be abstract and literal at the same time.

I love this new Greek place in the Cambrian area!

It's in a really strange shopping center on the corner of Union Ave. and Bascom Ave. It's where the Happy Days Diner used to be before a huge kitchen fire destroyed the interiors and left the diner boarded up for over a year. That burned out building was something I always wanted to do a photo project on, but I didn't get to it before it reopened as the Greek Kitchen.

Oh well, that's just as well because the Greek Kitchen rocks! I've certainly been there enough times since. The first thing you'll notice is that the place looks spotless. The next thing you'll notice is that the food is very fresh, healthy, and tasty.

The menu's not very complicated. It's basically your straight up popular Greek eatery type of fare: gyros, souvlaki, salads, and etc. The salad's not too special, but I'd give everything else a huge thumbs up! There's nothing wrong with the salad. It's just salad. I've been there four times the past few weeks and I'm tempted to go back again right now as I'm writing this. If you like Yiassoo, you'll love this place. It's similar fare, but it's cleaner inside, and everything tastes lighter and healthier without losing flavor.

The owner is a real hoot too. He just moved down from Toronto so he could enjoy a bit of the California sunshine. His family owns small chain of Greek eateries in Canada that the Greek Kitchen is based on.

I planned to write this review a long while back, but never got around to it and having just paid my CA License Fee, it reminded me to put up a word about Accurate Smog Check in Campbell.

Both my fiance and I have taken our cars for smog checks here for the past three years and we wouldn't go anywhere else. It's a small Test Only Smog Check station run by a Campbell couple, Paul and Christa Rumpler. Besides the point that it's a nice "Mom and Pop" shop run by a couple of very nice and friendly locals, they also really know what they're doing and the shop, despite being a little hidden, is a comfortable place to wait for your car to get done. Check out their merchant profile for pictures of their waiting lounge. It's as close to a real living room as you're going to find in a auto service place and there's even a play corner for kids.

They also really know what they're doing too. Paul used to own his own auto repairs shop in Southern California, but decided that he didn't want to deal with the headaches of operating a full scale auto shop and opened up a less stressful business when he and Christa moved up north. He's got a lot more experience and knowledge about cars than your average smog test technician (which should be comforting if you have a higher end car).

It's not that I've had problems with getting smog checks elsewhere. My cars have always been in good shape and it's usually just an uneventful boring affair, but Accurate Smog Check is just a much nicer experience and makes an otherwise mundane trip into a pleasant appointment. I highly recommend these guys!

I've stopped at a Pho Hoa once on the East Coast and a few times here in the Bay Area. I went there for the first time in years last week. It's the same as I remember it. It's basically McPho. It's ok if you're really in the mood for a bowl, but aren't anywhere near a real joint. It's inexpensive like most Pho restaurants, usually a tad cleaner, but not quite as flavorful as my preferred places.

Ever since my favorite London Fish 'n Chips closed down in Saratoga, I've been searching for a new favorite stop for fish 'n chips. I haven't been having much luck until I stumbled into Chris' Fish 'n Chips recently. They're no replacement for my old reigning favorite, but they come close and they're better in some ways.

First, gotta love the ambiance... or rather the lack of it. The place is dominated by a line of huge fryers and a food prep island. Behind the open air kitchen is their giant lighted menu with print big enough to be readable by someone who just had eye surgery. The limited seating fits in around a couple of rows on two sides of the open air kitchen and you can take your pick of different kinds of mismatching tables. The restaurant is very clean and amazingly has little odor considering that they're frying seafood in there all day.

The owners a friendly. It's run by a woman and her son. The two of them previously ran a juice stop in the very same location. Apparently, the fad ran out on the juice craze and she had to make a quick change to keep her business alive so she went back to something familiar to her.

If you're concerned about the unusual hop from Juice Stop to a Fish Fry, no need to worry. The woman who owns the restaurant with her son, used to own an H. Salt Fish and Chips in Sunnyvale and if you're not that fond of H. Salt, her fish is better. They must have learned something about freshness from the juice stop experience. The fish tastes fresh and comes out of the fryers crispy and light tasting without the greasy and heavy oil flavor that you get in lesser joints. I read one review on the wall that described the taste as buttery and flaky. That might be taking it a bit far. We're not talking about croissants here, but the sentiment is on the right track. It's great tasting Fish and Chips that gets better with their homemade tartar sauce. It's a tangier and sweeter version of the sauce than the kind you usually get out of packets.

In addition to your basic fish and chips, they also have fried prawns, oysters, and calamari. I didn't try those so I can't speak about them, but their fish really rocks!