Merry Christmas

I'm done. Super duper done with "Happy Holidays." I'm so very tired of all of the political correctness now a days. It's completely out of hand, and I have zero desire to live in a country like France that doesn't allow any religous expression.

So I'm officially announcing that "Happy Holidays" has left my vocabulary and will be replaced with "Merry Christmas." If you have a problem with that, I'll give you a cookie to help you over the pain and suffering that you must be feeling.

You Don't Know Jack

We live in a world where seemingly everything is known. That’s how I saw the world until the wonderful audio book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything” entered my life. I’m halfway through the audio book, and I can confidently say that we know jack. That’s being generous.

It’s probably because I’m not as educated as most, but I just didn’t understand the level of guessing that goes on in the sciences that is presented as fact to the general public. Here’s a couple of examples:

* Our attempts to uncover what the Earth is constructed of and how it is constructed are educated guesses at best. If the Earth were an apple, the furthest anyone (Russia) has been able to penetrate is 1/3 of the way through the skin. That leaves a lot of room for guessing errors. Granted, scientists have a really good idea of how it’s constructed from reading various waves that pass through the infrastructure, but then again, those ideas seem to change every 30 years or so.

* Scientists in Switzerland were able to take 2 neutrons from the same atom, separate them by 7 miles (the book didn’t get into how they did that), and then spin one of the neutrons. The other neutron immediately spun in the opposite direction at the same rate. Why? No clue.

Here’s two thoughts rumbling around in my head now:

1. Anytime I hear anything that is from a scientific study, my instant reaction is “riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.”

2. I actually think that there’s a lot of opportunity for those folks that enter the sciences to discover new and interesting things. I didn’t think that previously.

This blog now has an RSS feed. Schweet!

In Car Traffic Reports

Hi. It's 2004. Why in the heck aren't devices like this already built into the GPS navigation systems on new cars? Yeah, I know they are coming, but you'd think they'd be here by now. Anyway, I ordered one of these and I'll let you know how it works out. I just wish it extended into Riverside.

Let It Snow!

We awoke Sunday morning to a white blanket of snow in the yard. In Southern California. Where it never snows. Never. Ever. Did I say never?

Here's some more photos.

Figuring the Mass of the Earth

This morning's commute centered on how scientists were able to compute the mass of the Earth, without ever leaving the planet. One of Newton's laws was that every object exerts a force on every other object, proportionate to it's mass and distance from the other object. Although I'd never know, when I walk into my living room, my cat is drawn towards me and I'm drawn towards my cat by our own tiny gravitational force.

That's pretty cool in it's own right, however, scientist used this knowledge to survey a large mountain to determine it's volume. They were able to figure the gravitational force of the mountain by dropping a plumb line near it and noticing that the line was pulled toward the mountain. After careful measurement and more math than a human should have to endure, the scientists were able to figure the mass of the mountain, extrapolate that to the mass of the Earth, as well as other objects in our solar system.

Now, I'm certain I explained this far too simply and I will probably get flamed by someone, but that's not the point. The point is a non-scientist type person now has a better understanding on these things, even if it is a simple understanding.

Also, Newton was a complete nut case. He once took a large needle, used for sewing leather together, and stuck it into his ocular cavity. He inserted the needed between his eye and eye socket and swirled it around there, just to see what would happen. On another occasion, he stared at the sun until he could no longer stand it, just to see what would happen. And this is the same man who was annoyed at the limits of mathematics while he was a student, so he invented calculus!

CPU Idle Time

How about dumping that really cool screen saver, and donating your idle CPU cycles toward a worthy cause. It comes with a neat-o screen saver as well!

A Short History of Nearly Everything

After finishing the most excellent Ender's Game (how in the heck did I miss this book growing up?), I've downloaded and burned all 18 hours of my next audio book, A Short History of Nearly Everything.



I'm only about 45 minutes into the first disc, and I can tell you that I'm absolutely enthralled with the material. The book is actually more of a source of answers to all of those science questions an inquisitive person has probably wondered about. What's more important, is that the answers are descriptive enough for the reader to have a good understanding about each subject, yet not terribly technical to the point where you'd need to be a scientist to understand.

I did have to turn off the CD player after the first 45 minutes simply because of the weight of the subject material. He quite clearly explains the prevalent theory on the Big Bang, and it hurt my brain. :) Actually, it forced me to think about things in ways that I am simply not accustomed, which required some time away from the audio book to process. Those of you who are smarter than me, and I'm sure there are many, may not have the same problem.

I'm very excited about this title, and I will share my discoveries with those that care to read in future bloggings.

Something made my day today. A co-worker approached me and thanked me for my service to my country. That has never happened before, and I just wanted to tell everyone how that simple gesture has completely made my day. If you happen to know any veterans, give them a "thanks" and you too can feel great about having made someone's day! (No, don't thank me, I already feel great, thank someone else!)

Happy Birthday Marine Corps! And God speed to those of you in harms way, Marine or otherwise.

I ran across this really interesting graphic of how counties are broken down in the presidential election. I was actually surprised to see so much red. Granted, there's less people in a majority of these parts. I did find it interesting how the entire State of California votes Democrat mainly because of the San Francisco Bay Area, while most of the state (location wise) votes Republican.

I've finally figured out how to incorporate a moblog into my blog. I've had a camera phone for about 1 1/2 years; it's about time I figured this out.

Anyway, the photos section located on the right of this page should be updated much more frequently now. I have it set so that I can take pictures throughout the day with my camera phone, and they will appear almost instantly on the blog.

Q: Why would I be interested in photographs that you take throughout the day?

A: You wouldn't. The geek inside me required to figure out how to this. Go ask an artist type person to give you some real content.

I'm studying to obtain my Sun Java Programmer's certification. The exam is apparently much more difficult than the IBM or Microsoft exams, so I've been hitting the books pretty hard as of late.

The main book I've been using was written by the same people that penned Sun's exam. What's odd is that these people have a sense of humor, which is rare. Here's a passage that's made my studying time a bit more enjoyable:

"Contrary to popular belief, the exam creators are not evil or malicious. (I will admit, however, that while creating the exam, we experienced a giddy joy when one of us came up with a particularly tricky, er, clever question. High-fives all around!)"

A chapter later, I think I read probably the most confusing sentence I've ever stumbled upon:

"Once the subclass-outside-the-package inherits the protected member, that member (as inherited by the subclass) becomes private to any code outside the subclass, with the exception of subclasses of the subclass."

What's frightening is that now makes sense. Maybe it's time to schedule the exam.

When I got home yesterday, I was treated to the sight of our pool crumbling. There's a whole lot of money in that hole in the backyard, and this is really not something you'd like to see.

As you can see, the back wall of the pool is coming apart and falling into the muddy waters below. My foot sinks 6 inches for every step I take in the backyard, so I can't really see the damage for any other angle than what I can view from the house. Hopefully, it's not worse.

I'm hopeful that this won't be a problem, other than a delay in the schedule. As the pool construction company that I hired seems to have a good handle on how to handle any situation, and I've been very impressed with how they've performed so far on this project.

Some of my compatriots asked to see my "sweet office setup" that I reference when musing the purchase of an Aeron chair a few posts back.

Here it is!

It's raining in Los Angeles, and we're proving once again that we have no idea how to drive in any kind of wheather other than sunny.



Maybe on this afternoon's drive home, I'll finish all 9 of those CD's I talked about in today's earlier post. Yee-haw.

I recently moved to a very nice home in a very nice area. At the same time, I inherited a commute to work that some have commented as “insane.” The bastards; they’re right.

After listening to talk radio for the past 3 months, I can tell you that I have heard more about politics than any person should consume. I’m also convinced that both presidential candidates are complete dolts. Worse than the candidates are the talk shows that I tuned into to get away from the shows about politics only to find hosts wax on about their own politics. Ugh. The only politician I’m convinced is actually working for the people is Schwarzenegger, who regularly breaks from his own party's view to vote his concious. Who knew?

In an effort to find something else to listen to during the drive, I found two excellent resources: ITConversations.com and Audible.com.

ITConversations is a really great site that releases various recordings on a variety of technology topics. The best part is that the site is absolutely free, and judging by the first 3 recordings I’ve listened to, the content is outstanding. If you’re interested in sampling one of these recordings, I’d recommend the interview with Joel Spolsky if you’re a programmer type, and Wil Wheaton if you’re just a geek type. By the way, Wheaton’s audio tape doesn’t get that interesting until 20 minutes or so into it; your patience will be rewarded.

Audible.com allows you to download audio books and burn them to CD. For $19.95 a month, you can download 2 full books each month. That didn’t sound like a lot of content initially since I really have never listened to audio books. I can tell you that the first book I downloaded and burned is fully 9 CD’s. That’s a lot of driving I can now look forward to. As a bonus, you can get a sweet little mp3 player for free for signing up. I received mine yesterday, but haven’t had a chance to play with it, but I love the form factor.

In the end, I’m finally looking forward to the drive rather than dreading it!

To believe the lunacy of both presidential campaigns currently being fought, you might think that everyone is completely focused on becoming as politically correct as possible. Thankfully, Mr. Matt Ouimet, President of Disneyland, has made some command decisions to move away from his predecessors focus on not offending anyone.

The change I’m most excited about is the return of the pistols to the Jungle Cruise (free registration required). Yes, the Jungle Cruise is campy, and yes, I can see the point about why they removed the guns in the first place, even though I don’t agree with the decision. However, to my 5 year old, the Jungle Cruise is complete fantasy, and the illusion that we’re in danger of the hippos attacking may not be entirely real to her, but it definitely is exciting.

Thanks Mr. Ouimet for making these changes, and for allowing my kids to see Disneyland the way that I saw it at their age.

Angels vs. Red Sox

Last night, I had the opportunity to take in Game 2 of the American League Division Series between the Anaheim Angels and the Boston Red Sox. I went with my colleague, John, and we headed down to the ballpark a bit early to avoid the heavy traffic that was prevalent at Game 1.

While we sat in our seats and enjoyed a few drinks, the Red Sox were taking batting practice. Apparently, they liked zipping baseballs in my direction, because I was able to snag two balls! I gave one to John and kept the other one.

Free Souvenirs!

After an hour or so the game festivities began. There were quite a few Red Sox fans in the stands. While they were very intense, 99% of them were very well mannered. We even had one Boston fan wish us luck before the game. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with these folks. More fans should be like this. It really allows everyone to enjoy the game that much more. That’s not to say there weren’t some incidents in the stands, but the majority of fans were cordial to each other.

Bart

Bartolo Colon started for our Angels, and threw a pretty good game. In the end, the Angels bullpen let them down, but quite frankly, the Red Sox are a very good team and assuming they get past the Angles in this series, I fully expect them to win a ring. It would be well deserved. It was a long game; almost 4 hours.

As I left the stadium thinking that was the last baseball game we’ll see in person until April 2005. A very sour thought.

I'm in the market for a home office chair, now that I've furnished my home office with a sweet setup from workspaces.com. Of course, I have to at least consider an Areon chair, but they're just so damn expensive (e.g. $600). While poking around on the web, I found this site that points out the pitfalls of the Areon chair. You need to take a look at the movies though. They're classic!

I have been eagerly awaiting this November since I spent some time at e3 this year. If you’ve ever been to this amazing conference, you’ll find at least 10 different games that are coming the future that will have you salivating. Well, it happens that most of those games that I am eagerly awaiting are all coming out in November. What are they?

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3—I’m embarrassed at the amount of time I’ve spent playing the predecessors. If you didn’t know, you can download the demo for this right now! I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen so far. The fireworks shows are really cool!

Half-Life 2—A sequel to one of the best First Person Shooters ever made, and it looks like it will be a worthy sequel at that. Hopefully released before Christmas.

Pirates!

Pirates!—A remake of another game I sunk untold amounts of time into on the Commodore 64. At the time that this game made its debut, I had several friends that owned a Commodore 64. All of us, without exception, love the original game. The update has kept much of the core game play and added quite a bit as well. The demonstration at e3 was striking. The real appeal of this game is the open ended play, and the fact that it is never the same game twice.

Halo 2—The definitive FPS for the Xbox. While the PC has been shining for years in the FPS arena, Halo was the first FPS that really demonstrated the high quality that PC users have enjoyed. Halo 2 introduces a lot of new game play aspects and is heavily concentrated on multiplayer play over Xbox Live. Fragalistic.

World of Warcraft—This is it. I’m swearing off MMORPG’s for good if this game doesn’t capture my attention. The developers have to find a way to make a game that appeals to people like me who like to play for a few hours at a time and feel like we’ve accomplished something. If that doesn’t happen, then I refer them to the above list because I’ll be spending my time in other games.

If I had to pick one of these games to be the highest on my anticipated list, it would absolutely be Pirates. Hands down. I plan on disappearing from the planet for many days when that game is released.

With the above in mind, I’ve been trying my best to get the important things in life done in October before this crop of games arrives. I cannot remember a time where I have been more excited about this many releases at once. It’s going to be a great Winter!

Oh, and the Angels need to find a way to win tonight! That last game was embarrassing. Go Halos!

This article is a must read for anyone in the software development world. My favorite quote: "If there is a Michael Jordan of hacking, no one knows, including him."

My post from a few days ago regarding that woman's trip on a passenger plane that was fraught with danger is apparently a complete overreaction on her part.  I feel pretty foolish for just accepting a report like that as fact.  Snopes has more on the truth of the matter.   And check out this article with a great composite photo.

Want a Gmail account?  I have 3 invites for the first 3 comments of this post.

I finished Far Cry!  Yea!  I'd say I had a good 60 hours into this game.  Probably because I like to kill everything on each level instead of just running through it as fast as possible.  This is quite easily the best game I've played in the last year and I'd put it right up there with the original Half-Life, if not better.  Blasphemy: I know.

It appears that terrorists have been staging "dry runs" on various flights in the United States.  Unfortunately, our focus on political correctness is going to get us in trouble again.  Here's an article from a journalist who experienced what must have been the longest flight of her life. 
 


The photograph referenced in the second article.
The writer follows up with another article that discusses the communications she has had with the airline industry and TSA.
 
A unnerving quote is provided by Gary Boettcher, Member, Board of Directors, Allied Pilots Association.  "Folks, I am a Captain with a major airline. I was very involved with the Arming Pilots effort. Your reprint of this airborne event is not a singular nor isolated experience. The terrorists are probing us all the time."
 
Sobering.

This weekend I achieved the next level in culinary creation.  Um, not.  But I did manage to make a souffle, which I've always thought of as a near impossible task.
 
Again, my hats off to Alton Brown of Good Eats.  The man quite simply is a genious.  I could sit here and yammer until I'm blue in the face about how good a cook I am.  The fact of the matter is:  I'm not.  I am however good at following instructions, and Alton gives you plenty of them to create a souffle that can withstand my best attempts at destroying it.
 
What do I mean?  Well, Mr. Brown understands the chemical reactions of cooking, so he understands the "why's" better than any other television chef I've seen.  More importantly, he does his best to impart his knowledge in a creative and entertaining fashion that fits within my 5 minute attention span.
 
Voila! My masterpiece! 
For example, he recommends using just a bid of an acidic compount (Cream of Tartar) when whipping all that air into the egg whites.  Why?  Because it helps the proteins hold together while they are stretching to their limits, which makes it easier to achieve our cooking goals for those of us with less than stellar talent for this task.  Talent may be on Wolfgang Puck's side, but chemistry is on mine!
 
Lessons learned for the next souffle:
 
1.  Must acquire a big ole giant spatula.  I'm talking huge.  When folding the base with the whipped egg whites, the bigger the spatula the better.  I could see that I was losing more bubbles than I wanted to in the egg whites because I had to mix more because of the smaller spatula I used (and it wasn't all that small).  I actually think this is the key to making this souffle perfectly.
 
2.  I should have left the souffle in the oven a couple of minutes longer.  Just a bit longer.  It was a bit too runny in the middle.  I think that this was a direct result of not having a big enough spatula and losing some of the bubble in the mixing process, which resulted in a runny middle (not by much though).
 
 

Excuse me while I trip over myself to get as many photos as I can entered into the new Disneyland Family Album.  Oh my!

Disney Family Album

Those that know me know that I'm far from a fan of California.  The State has many problems, most of which, in my humble opinion, are brought on from our extremely liberal politicians and appellete courts.  While I'm all for helping my fellow man, our leaders have simply lost touch.
 
One of the problems that plagues the State is illegal immigration.  While I've heard people comment that "they work jobs that Americans won't work," or "they're not hurting anyone."  The fact of the matter is that the influx of people into California has caused a serious strain on the infrastructure.  Everything from health care to housing to traffic has been affected.  While every State can see a population surge, seeing a population surge without the associated increase in the tax base ends up compounding our problems with no monies for a solution.
 
That's why it's fun to read a memo like this from our State Assembly.  Our elected officials enjoy celebrating Cinco de Mayo but then won't celebrate the 4th of July.  Whatever.
 
Please register to vote.  We need to stop focusing on the Presential election and start focusing on these bozos that are placed in the State Legislature who backed another clown like Gray Davis.  I guarantee that your vote is very important when it comes to choosing your local politicians.
 

Two really neat optical illusions for you! Here and here.

Here's a red light camera that caught a terrible accident. I'm actually surprised at just how good of quality the footage is from one of those cameras. Read the story and there's a link to the video at the bottom.

I was going to create a series of pet peeves and list one every day, however, I think I'll just write about them as they happen.



I'm driving a lot lately and so I listen to the radio. One station I listen to frequently is KFI 640 AM. They have good shows, but their news and traffic staff has a habit of annoying me.

Here's the two things that annoy me:

1. They use the word "guy" all the time. "The guy was arrested," or "The guy was chased by police." As a news outlet, you'd think they'd try to at least sound intelligent. An aside, I'm also annoyed at waiters/waitresses that use the "how are you guys doing?" greeting. Can you just change that to "how are you two doing?" or "Good evening"?

2. If this happened only once, then I don't think I'd think twice about it, but the traffic reporter always reports a fatality as: "This is a fatal accident. Someone died." Hey, Sherlock, I know what fatal means. So does everyone else in Los Angeles. Pick one or the other, but don't use both.

Okay, I'm done bitching about completely stupid things now. I guess that's why they're called pet peeves!

As we approach the All-Star break, it's time to check in with my fantasy baseball league. As you may recall, this is my first year playing fantasy baseball and it's been quite a learning experience.

Somethings I've learned:

1. You have to manage your team every day. Every day. Even on weekends. Somtimes this isn't very fun.

2. Outstanding defensive players are of zero use. There's no category that is tracked that gives you points for great defense. I'm not sure how they would implement such a system, but it's a major drawback to the game.

3. As the season progresses, you really need to stay on top of the categories that you earn points in. In my case, I'm doing very well with stolen bases but my relief pitching is abysmal. It's not that I don't have good relievers, I just don't have as many as the other players which has lowered the amount of saves my team has.

4. The major upside of the game is you become a fan of individual players in both leagues on a variety of teams.

5. I have been scolded several times when I'm at an Angels game with my girlfriend and I mention that the opposing player at bat is on my team. "You cannot root for him. That's not allowed." Hey, as long as the Angels win, and my guy on the other team does well, then I do not care. :)


Go Knockers!

In any case, I think I'm doing fairly well for a newbie. For the first couple of months, the standings would swing wildly about. I remember being in 1st place for a few days and then immediately dropping to 9th place. Now that the season is fairly far along, the standings have firmed up a bit, and I've been in 2nd or 3rd place for the last month. However, the 1st place L-ville Sluggers had a commanding lead of over 100 points at one point, but now has fallen off that pace and is now within my reach. *insert menacing laugh here*

I'm just as excited as I was at the beginning of the season to have Vladimir Guerrero on my team (.347 AVG, leads the league in home runs (20) and RBI's (72)). The man is just wrong. He'll swing at pitches that are 5 inches outside the strike zone and put them over the fence. Where in the hell are you supposed to pitch to this guy?

I'm looking forward to the rest of the season because I believe I have a solid team. The one sorely lacking area of my team (saves) has hopefully been fixed with a trade that was finalized yesterday. I picked up Octavio Dotel of the A's and Troy Percival of the Angels in exchange for Texas 3rd baseman Hank Blalock (who's had a tremendous year).

And yes, I know that I had O. Dotel at the beginning of the year. I traded him away early in the season to obtain Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez of the Angels and Matt Clement of the Cubs. I made that trade because all of my pitching was poor. Now that the starting pitching is forming up well, I'm getting O. Dotel back to help with the saves.

Here's an interesting open source project called MythTV. It's basically a DVR but with expanded functionality beyond Tivo and Windows XP Media Center.



Hopefully I can make some time to play around with this in the near future.

Interesting concept over at eSnipe. It's an automated server that allows you to place bids on eBay items, however, it waits until the last possible moment to actually place the bid.

What a great idea! I've wasted plenty of time refreshing my eBay screen at some ridiculous hour in the morning to make sure I won an auction. No more late nights or being annoyed when someone schedules a meeting that overlaps an auction end.

I can't decide how I feel about this site: Japander. It's a website that shows all of the Japanese commercials that American celebrities have pimped themselves for. I have conflicting emotions between highly disturbed and highly amused.


D'oh!

For example, these advertisements using The Simpsons are, well, what the hell are they?

Now that we’re in the new house, it’s time to start breaking in the huge kitchen!



Burger of the Gods. Oh my, this certainly does live up to its namesake.

The downside of this recipe is that you need to grind your own meat, and that requires a good food processor. Good food processors are not cheap, but after eating these hamburgers, the cost of one is certainly a value. Of course, there’s a myriad of other things to do with a food processor, but grinding up your own beef easily is a task that it excels at.

The other downside is that the meat will be more expensive than the traditional ground beef that is in the supermarket. But I really don’t see how I could ever make a hamburger again out of that stuff. There’s really no comparison.

After seeing the Good Eats episode where Alton Brown makes these hamburgers, he suggests that the first time you try them, to only use mayonnaise and some pepper on the toasted bun. Okay, I’ll give it a shot.

Wow. The juices from the hamburger mix in with the mayonnaise and make a sauce of its own. I assume from now on that I’ll be using the regular hamburger trappings because they will make the burger that much better, but it certainly doesn’t need any help!

And now to figure out what to make next!

It seems that you really can't do much of anything these days in California unless you're a celebrity. We've got a celebrity governor and now the unheard of: a celebrity poker champion.

Yep, it's true, Ben Affleck won the California State Poker Championship.


California Poker Champion, Ben Affleck

Poker is certainly undergoing a tremendous amount of growth these days. I like the game, and have been playing in various California casinos for about 3 years now. I've never played at more than a $3-$6 game however, because I'm certain better players lurk at higher limit games. I will say that with the influx of all the new players, it has become easier and easier to walk away from a couple of hours of play with at least a 20% win.

I'm a tight-agressive player, and while I do get my share of bad beats, it almost always works out that some players will just call all the way to the river with absolute crap in their hands. I guess that it all works out in my favor in the end, and there's nothing I like more than to be verbally attacked for check raising some guy that is trying to see if his offsuit A-2 is going to somehow magically pay off.

I have been playing more and more online for a variety of reasons:

1. It's easy to get in and out of games.
2. There's plenty of bad players online.
3. I have a chart that I use to quickly evaluate hands, and I can use it in an online game, but not at the casino.
4. I can take notes on each players play, and when I get in a heads up situation with any of them, I have some very accurate data on which to make my decisions.
5. I can play at two tables at once. This one can bite you, as you can catch two good hands at once which leads to some quick decisions, but with tight-aggressive play, you end up throwing 80% of your hands away before betting, so this generally works out.
6. Play is much, much, much faster than in the casino.
7. You can play with a 4 color deck which makes reading a mix of clubs and spades as a flush absolutely impossible.

Anyway, if you're interested in playing online, I'm really enjoying myself at Party Poker. Go check it out! If you make a deposit, make sure to tell them that "sgtdilbert" sent you! :)

While attending that conference in Vegas, which included several information systems auditors, I learned of a vulnerability of the 802.11b wireless protocol. If you’re using a wireless router somewhere, you most likely are using the 802.11b protocol.

What I found interesting, as the auditor explained, was that the flaw was in the actual protocol itself. That doesn’t happen much to something as widely used as 802.11b.



After returning from the conference, I did a little reading on the subject, and I’m not certain that this flaw is a major problem, albeit an annoyance. First, no data is at risk here (although the security encryption inherit in many wireless routers has been cracked for sometime now; that’s another blog entry).

Here’s how it works: a hacker is able to issue instructions to their wireless card on their computer to send out data in a specific manner. The wireless router then interprets this data as interference. This apparently takes all of 8 seconds to accomplish.

The 802.11b protocol goes about its business until it encounters interference. When it does, it stops network traffic for a bit and then resumes. However, the hacker doesn’t just hit the network with one burst of bogus data. Instead, the bogus data is sent constantly, which essentially prevents the wireless network from working resulting in Denial of Service.

So how is the industry reacting to solve this problem? They’re not, according to this article. Go figure. Since the hacker needs to be within a few hundred feet of a wireless router, most companies are hoping that these malicious folks won’t be hanging around their offices causing problems.

Don’t these folks think that someone out there is going to invent a virus that finds wireless cards and forces them to send out the bogus interference data? That’s my prediction: sometime in the next six months, someone is going to release just such a virus, and it’s going to cause some serious connectivity issues.

Vegas, baby, Vegas.

I like Vegas, a lot. I really enjoy playing craps, but rarely do I get out to Nevada to enjoy the game. In fact, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve been, and for some odd reason, I ended up going to Vegas twice in one week last week: once for a good friend’s bachelor party and again two days later for a technical conference.

Although I didn’t play much, I did become closer to my friends and to my colleagues at work over the time I spent there. On the second trip, we enjoyed a fine dinner at Gallagher’s at New York New York. They have steaks that are aged for 14 days, and since I had never had one these before, I gave it a whirl. Outstanding, but bring your appetite!


Before dinner at Gallagher’s

The other highlight of my time there was watching my soon to be married friend’s brother play trumpet in a very good lounge act at the Bellagio. His brother has been able to make a good living playing in Vegas in a variety of shows, and has had steady work for the past six years!

As always, each trip to Vegas results in the impression that this town will never stop growing. How many hotel rooms is enough? I don’t know, but they apparently haven’t reached the limit yet. Practically every large resort on The Strip had some sort of ongoing construction project.

Enjoy your weekend and thank a Veteran if you get the chance.

The joy of ownership or just how insane is the Southern California housing market?


The new house as of last Saturday, May 8th

So, it's been a scant 10 weeks since I signed the purchase agreement for this house. Today, in the mail, I received a listing of new houses that have been released in this same tract and they are a full $20,000 more than what I paid.

So, I've learned two lessons:

1. The housing market in Southern California continues to be nutty. Proof positive is that my home has already increased in value by $20,000 and it's not even completed yet!

2. The sales people don't even care who you are, because even after dropping a bundle on my house, they still call me and send me mail as if I'm a prospective buyer. I guess buying one home from them isn't enough!

Last Friday evening, I went to Disneyland with my kids and was enjoying the “grand circle tour of Disneyland” on the Disneyland Rail Road. My son loves trains, so this is one of his favorite things to do at the park. Oddly enough, he loves the tram ride from the parking lot so much that he cries when we disembark. I digress.



We happened to sit in front of the conductor that makes all of the announcements on the train (e.g. sit down, hands and arms inside, etc.). The conductor also calls out “all aboard” before the train is ready to move.

The conductor asked my daughter, “can you say ‘all aboard’?” “Uh huh,” my daughter replied. So the conductor put the microphone in front of her mouth and said “say it.” In a tiny squeaky soft voice, my daughter said “all aboard.” “You’re not that shy,” the conductor said.

So, the conductor turns to my two year old son and says, “how about you, can you say ‘all aboard’?”

Now, let me tell you that my son has been practicing for this moment his entire life. I don’t think ‘all aboard’ were his first words, but they were in the top ten. He has loved the Disneyland train since he first went to Disneyland when he was 6 months old. Whenever he is playing with his train sets (yes, that’s plural) at home, you can often hear him say, “all aboard, toot toot!”

My son replied to the conductor, in a booming two year old voice, “Uh huh.”

“Well,” the conductor smiled, “then say ‘all aboard,” as she moved the microphone in front of his mouth. The strapping young lad then said “all aboard” at a nice volume that everyone could hear throughout the train. That’s my son!

The Cast Members at Disneyland can really make a routine trip to their park extraordinary. Thank you!

Long time no blog. I’ve been very busy day to day recently, and the blog is usually on the low priority for the day. Plus the fact that I have never really enjoyed writing all that much, so it’s easy for me play hooky.

Today’s topic: eggs. I’ve been meaning to post this since Easter when my family visited and I whipped up a batch of scrambled eggs.

First, some history. Growing up, I worked at Law’s Coffee Shop in Oak Glen for about 5 years. Most of that time was spent in the kitchen. Every month, we’d have a breakfast buffet, and my main responsibility was cooking more eggs than any human should have to. I believe I cooked over 30 flats of eggs one morning, which is just wrong on so many levels.

So, with that amount of experience, I consider myself a damn good cook of eggs. Enter Alton Brown of Good Eats fame.



I love Alton. He’s my hero. If you’ve never watched his show on Food Network, and you have even a passing interest in cooking, you need to tune in. Even my 5 year old enjoys watching this show!

Recently, an episode addressed egg cooking, and one of the topics he addressed was scrambled eggs. I thought I’d give his method a spin, and wow. Wow. I’m not kidding. The results were mind boggling. If you ever wanted perfect scrambled eggs, here’s what you do:

1. Scramble your eggs in a bowl, and add a little milk.

2. Place some butter in a pan and let it melt on medium low heat.

3. Put the eggs in the pan, stir occasionally.

4. Here’s the magic: when the eggs just start to curdle, turn the heat to high! Yes, high! Stir constantly with a spatula.

5. When there is no more liquid in the pan, move the eggs to the plate. This is the hard one for me, because the eggs do not look done. But, they continue to cook on the plate and by the time they are served, they will be done.

Voila, perfect eggs. Give it a try. It’ll knock your socks off.

And if you’re interested in Alton Brown, you need to check out this wonderful fan page that has a transcript of every show he’s ever done with links to his recipes.

Now, that’s Good Eats.

GAMING: APRIL FOOLS



Best April Fool's I've seen today!

BASEBALL: FANTASY LEAGUE

This year, I'm trying my hand at owning a team in a fantasy baseball league. So far, it's been a very enjoyable process and highlighted the massive gap in my baseball knowledge to any player that doesn't wear a Angel's uniform.

So, here's my 2004 team!



I'm most excited about picking up Vladimir Guerrero, one of the newest Angels players, and arguably one of the top 5 players in baseball. I also signed hurler Tim Hudson of the Oakland A's and another great pitcher, Octavio Dotel of the Astros. I think I have a very strong team, with my weakest position at catcher right now. I do have a trade in the works so hopefully that position will be upgraded shortly.

What's interesting about this is that you become fans of specific players instead of focusing on a team. From what I've read, I'll have to stay active on a daily basis in order to manage the team, but it's going to be really good time watching how my players progress throughout the year.

DISNEY: BIG THUNDER RAILROAD

This past week, Big Thunder Railroad was quietly reopened at Disneyland. They took the opportunity while fixing the ride to also refurbish it quite extensively. I have yet to take a ride, but I am glad that it is back up and running as the park is always packed lately because of all the ride closures.


Big Thunder reopened last week

Here's some interesting photographs of the accident. These pictures are just of the ride vehicle and track; nothing objectional.

GAMING: CALL OF DUTY

There was a time in my life where I would go and watch movies on opening weekend and get the latest and greatest games on release. These days, I get to movies usually when they are on pay-per-view or HBO. I’m better about games, and those games that most people like, I usually get to within a year.

I finally got around to purchasing Call of Duty. Let me begin by saying that I am not a giant First Person Shooter (FPS) fan. I enjoy FPS’s, but primarily when I’m playing my friends, as it’s more of the social interaction with them that I enjoy than the game itself.

There has been one notable exception: Half-Life. I remember being completely addicted to Half-Life, and even playing the game in a darkened room with the sound cranked up so that the head crabs jumping out of the ceiling tiles would literally scare me enough to get me to jump.

I don’t want to say that I’m as addicted to Call of Duty as I was to Half-Life, because then I’d have to make an admission about a problem that I don’t want to fix. I love Call of Duty. I have only played a couple of multiplayer games, but the single player campaign is fabulous! The detail, the sheer number of models, the quality of the graphics and sound; all of these add up to more than the sum of their parts.

So far my favorite is the Russian campaign, simply because of how they set the mood. You find yourself rushing a hill, but there’s only a few weapons to be handed out, and lucky me, I get 5 bullets. I guess I can toss them at the Germans. So after you make it through this mess, you are told to charge across Red Square into machine gun fire. If, you decide to turn back, you will be shot. This was brutally brought home as I ran forward, grabbed a weapon on the ground, assumed the prone position and started laying down suppression fire for my comrades. My lack of rushing the machine guns was noticed, and an Russian officer shot me. Rush, means rush. Got it.

If the devil is in the details, then he’s completely intertwined in this game. I highly recommend this game to anyone who has a passing interest in World War II.

I’ve always been in a bind living in Southern California and loving baseball. When I was growing up, my cousin was a starting pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Naturally, I grew to love the Giants. Since their mortal enemies are the Los Angeles Dodgers, I have a natural aversion to Chavez Ravine.

So, I have to go to Angels games. Now, they’ve been very entertaining over the years. Not because of the astounding baseball, but because of the really bizarre plays and errors that you would rarely see from a top notch organization.

That all changed in 2002 with their first World Series Championship in club history. The Disney Corporation decided it was time to sell the ball club in 2003 and new owner Arte Moreno took the reins.


Arte Moreno, Anaheim Angels owner

The new owner has been outstanding for the Angels. The first week he took over he lowered beer prices. He lowered ticket prices to fill the stadium. He has spent an additional $75 million on signing new players. He is upgrading the stadium scoreboards.

And now word comes that he is in negotiations to have approximately 150 games televised! Wow! That’s a 300% increase from last year. The manner in which he is going about this is really amazing. Instead of convincing stations to carry the games, he is simply buying the airtime and then the Angels will sell the commercials. Talk about balls.

I’m very excited about the future of the club, and more importantly the value of my season seats when I need to sell quite a few of them each season!

Even if all of his spending and effort fails to produce several winning seasons in the future, it’s good to know that there’s an owner that is doing everything within his power to ensure that the Anaheim Angels are a great team and are great to their fans.