I’m a going to Disney World!

It’s been a long year with some difficult stretches. I booked a trip to Disney World for myself, my children and my sister almost a year ago and I’ve been looking forward to it for months. In addition, I’m lucky enough to be spending next week with one of my best childhood friends, Dave, and his family.

We’re staying at The Beach Club Villas which is a 5 minute walk to the gates of Epcot. It’s also surrounded by The Boardwalk area which is usually bustling with activity late into the evening. I’m really looking forward to spending an evening at Jellyrolls and enjoying the incredibly talented dueling piano players.

I also managed to book some really fun things for the kids to do, such as the Princess Tea Party for my sister and daughter and the Pirate Adventure for my son. While it’s never inexpensive for these events, they are always top notch and are a guaranteed happy memory for my kids, which is really what it’s all about anyway.

I’ve visited Disney World approximately ten times before, but this will be the first time I’ve been there during the holidays and I’m really looking forward to all of the decorations. I fully expect to return home in a holiday mood! See you when I return from the World!

Happy 230th Birthday Marines!

In honor of the Marine Corps 230th birthday, I thought I'd share one of my favorite stories. I performed the colors ceremony at Camp Pendleton more times than I could possibly remember, so I'm always touched by this story whenever I read it.

A foreign diplomat who often criticized American policy once observed a United States Marine perform the evening colors ceremony. The diplomat wrote about this simple but solemn ceremony in a letter to his home ministry:

During one of the past few days, I had occasion to visit the U.S. Embassy in our capital after official working hours. I arrived at a quarter to six and was met by the Marine on guard at the entrance of the Chancery. He asked if I wouldn't mind waiting while he lowered the two American flags at the Embassy. What I witnessed over the next 10 minutes so impressed me that I am now led to make this occurrence part of my ongoing record of this distressing era.

The Marine was dressed in a uniform which was spotless and neat; he walked with a measured tread from the entrance of the Chancery to the stainless steel flagpole before the Embassy and, almost reverently, lowered the flag to the level of his reach where he began to fold it in military fashion. He then released the flag from the clasps attaching it to the rope, stepped back from the pole, made an about face, and carried the flag between his hands--one above, one below--and placed it securely on a stand before the Chancery. He then marched over to the second flagpole and repeated the same lonesome ceremony. On the way between poles, he mentioned to me very briefly that he would soon be finished. After completing his task, he apologized for the delay out of pure courtesy, as nothing less than incapacity would have prevented him from fulfilling his goal, and said to me, “Thank you for waiting, Sir. I had to pay honor to my country.”

I have had to tell this story because there was something impressive about a lone Marine carrying out a ceremonial task which obviously meant very much to him and which, in its simplicity made the might, the power, and the glory of the United States of America stand forth in a way that a mighty wave of military aircraft, or the passage of a super-carrier, or a parade of 10,000 men could never have made manifest. In spite of all the many things that I can say negatively about the United States, I do not think there is a soldier, nay, even a private citizen, who could feel as proud about our country today as the Marine does for his country.

One day it is my hope to visit one of our embassies in a faraway place and to see a soldier fold our flag and turn to a stranger and say, "I am sorry for the delay, Sir. I had to honor my country."

iPod Video

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time at the gym on the elliptical machine. I really enjoy running outside, but I’ve found that the wear and tear on my knees after I run about 5 miles keeps me from exercising for several days afterward. That’s been self defeating. So, the elliptical machine has been my best friend and I spend time with it for an hour each day, six days a week.

The huge downside of this is that it’s boring. And I mean boring as in “I’d rather be watching Gigli” boring. Luckily, I have found the solution!

A few weeks ago, I decided to buy an iPod because I have a new stereo system and I thought it would be cool to hook up all of my songs to the system. My buddy Marc has this setup at his house and it’s absolutely fantastic. The only iPod’s that are now available are the 5th generation where they play video. Cool feature, I thought, but not required for my needs.

I really love the form factor on the new iPod. I had purchased a 2nd generation iPod for my ex-girlfriend, and while it was cool, it was fairly thick. This one seems to be the perfect size to easily fit in your hand without being too bulky.

Until now. I have downloaded the entire 1st season of Lost and the 5 episodes from the 2nd season and they are happily awaiting my viewing while exercising myself into the ground. I tried this out yesterday, and while the screen is small, it still works great. The hour flew by, and that is worth any amount in my book.

Now, if they would just release Alias for the iPod, I would be in heaven! :)

Undead Starbucks Employees

Now this is funny. Employees of an independent coffee house in San Francisco dressed up as Starbucks Employee Zombies for Halloween. Classic!

Push

There’s a great post over on this blog regarding “Push,” the talking, walking garbage can at Disneyland. I visit Disneyland often and have only ever seen him one time, and I was absolutely memorized by the entire interaction. He’s apparently been around since 1997, so catching Push in action is a bit of a challenge.

Gee, I wonder why they call him "Push." ;)

It’s not that a talking garbage can is so cool, heck even Disney World has a talking drinking fountain. Or even that it can wander about around the park. The magic comes from the operators, who have a great sense of humor and performance.

You can read more about the sense of humor Push has on the other blog (“Domo arigato! Sushi! Nintendo! Ichiro!"), but here are two events that I witnessed that literally had me in tears:

* Push was wandering about while a man wearing a red shirt with a maple leaf emblazed on the front of it wandered by, not even noticing that the trash can was moving. Immediately, Push starts a rousing chorus of “Oh, Canada.” I couldn’t do justice in words to describe this man’s reaction when he turned around and saw a trash can following him singing his national anthem.

* As Push was moving into a store, and eventually to the backstage area, several kids start pushing him. They actually almost toppled the trash can at one point. I was curious what would happen, because at the time I thought that perhaps there was actually someone inside the trash can (there’s not). Push’s comment: “Hey kid, don’t you have parents somewhere?” Then you here a woman’s voice from the crowd “Kyle!” Push says, “Hey Kyle, go find your mom!”

Literally tears from laughing so hard!

There’s always next year!

Those Rat Bastard Chicago White Sox™. They completely outplayed the Angels and the Red Sox, there’s no denying that, and now they can enjoy a 6 day rest before the World Series begins.

So let me say it here (begin mumbling) congratulations to the White Sox (end mumbling) (begin screaming) Rat Bastards! (end screaming).



And I just got my new HDTV to watch the Angels play in the World Series. They must have missed the memo I sent. Rat Bastards.

Trap Shooting

I joined up with my good friend Rick last night for something I had never done before. Trap shooting. Rick provided the shotguns, and I provided the shells. I think I got the better end of that deal.

I had never fired a shotgun, and really my only experience with a weapon is qualifying Expert with the M-16 rifle while a Marine. Apparently, the Marine Corps training does translate to the shotgun. :)

After Rick showed me the basics on how to load and eject the round and clear the weapon if it jammed, he then instructed me on etiquette I was expected to adhere to. Since you fire with 4 other people at the same time, there’s a certain rhythm that develops from the group, and he gave me some finer points on how to not look like a complete newbie.

This isn't us, but it's similar to how the range we visited is setup.

When our group was called, Rick and I were standing next to each other in positions 4 and 5 so if something unexpected happened, he could give me a hand. Honestly, my goal here was to load the weapon, fire it, and reload, and that was it. Hitting any of the clay pigeons was secondary.

25 pigeons are sent flying for you to shoot at, one at a time. They each take different trajectories and you don’t know which way they’re going until they’re already flying. I’d say you have about 1 second to get a bead on the clay pigeon, and maybe 1-2 seconds more to fire. So, this really is a very focused sport. After 5 clay pigeons, you rotate with everyone in the group so that everyone has a chance to fire from each of the 5 firing positions.

Of the first 5 pigeons that flew, I hit every one of them. I was a bit surprised to see the bring orange of the clay bursting. I couldn’t believe that I was actually hitting the little things. Rick walked by me while we were rotating, and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! You’ve never shot trap before?”

It turns out that I hit 19 of 25 targets for my first ever round of trap. I was certainly feeling smug.

That is, until the second round, when I scored a dismal 11 hits. Clearly, this is one of those sports like golf, where you can be on or off, and it’s just going to take some experience to get better.

I expected the shotgun to have some serious recoil, but it turns out that it was very domicile. However, when I woke up this morning, I found that my shoulder has a small bruise and my cheek hurts from laying my face on the stock of the shotgun and absorbing the recoil. Obviously, my initial opinion that there wasn’t much recoil was very, very wrong.

I must say that if you’ve never tried this before, this is something you should give a go.

Thank you Letterman!

Classic, just classic. :)

Top Ten New York Yankees Excuses

10. "The Angels have developed a secret pitch that curves"

9. "Players left logy by clubhouse paella"

8. "Aren't used to rat-free outfield"

7. "Average player age is 52"

6. "Didn't know if they were playing California Angels, Anaheim Angels, or Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim"

5. "Acid reflux"

4. "How are you supposed to field a competitive team on $200 million?"

3. "Due to typo in latest memo, Steinbrenner demanded players give 10%"

2. "Giambi lost his lucky syringe"

1. "Who can concentrate on Baseball when Hockey is back?"

Mad Magazine

A kind soul has scanned in every Mad Magazine cover. It’s a fun exercise to go back and try to see what the earliest one that you can remember. For me, it’s January 1982, when I was 11 years old.

You Get What You Pay For

My work life can be stale at times, so I’m always looking forward to spicing up the day with a little humor.

Earlier, my boss asked me if I brought my digital camera. “No, why?” I responded. “Because the other office that is sharing our server hardware and paying a bundle for it wants to see what they’re paying for.”

Insert maniacal laughter here.

The server farm that we do have is nice, neat and looks like something that would be home on the Death Star. Of course, the picture that the remote office received was this one:



Sometimes, I love my job. ;)

Fireflies

I had never seen a firefly until just this past summer when I visited Ohio. The residents there don't even notice them much, but I found them to be fascinating and beautiful. My favorite viewing was watching the fireflies dance at the edge of a wooded area next to my hotel. I could watch that all night long!

Now there's a perfect way to bring fireflies to my own back yard! An ex-imagineer from Disney has drawn up the plans for the electrical creations that can be built with parts from your handy dandy local Radio Shack. Enjoy!

Welcome to October

'sniff'

Smell that? That’s called baseball, and the air is thick with playoff anticipation. The Los Angeles Anaheim Angels are back in the hunt after winning the American League Western Division title and clinching a playoff berth much earlier than other teams. I think this will be a real key to their success, as they’ve had plenty of time to get their pitchers rested and the rotation set while other teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and White Sox went down to the wire to secure their playoff hopes.

Red, white and blue!

Proving yet again why everyone hates the Yankees, their players and coaches have already started whining. I guess it’s a good sign that your opponent is focused on things like this when they should probably be focused on how to beat the Angels.

I don’t have tickets this year, because I work an early shift and wouldn’t have been able to see the majority of games. But, I can say that Angel Stadium will be electric tonight. I’d hate to be in the Yankees shoes, although Boston proved last year that the Angels can be beaten even with home field advantage. Still, the Angels seem to have had the Yankees number over the past few seasons, even in Yankee Stadium.

It’s going to be a great week! Enjoy!

Turtle Talk

Sometimes it just comes down to someone’s sheer creativity to really impress you. Lately, to make up for Disney’s California Adventure’s many shortcomings, many millions have been literally thrown at the park.

One gem, which I suspect didn’t cost a huge amount of cash, is Turtle Talk with Crush the turtle from Finding Nemo. We went in and visited Crush and were pleasantly surprised. You enter a small room with theatre seating for about 100 people, and more floor seating near the front for the kids.


At the front of the room is a large screen that looks like a huge fish tank with all the accoutrements of undersea life present. After a host goes over some rules, Crush swims on to the screen and starts talking about how he wants to learn more about humans, so he has some questions for you! Of course, he’s a bit concerned as he says, “dudes, there’s no water in your tank, dudes! Weird, dudes! You humans have serious thrill issues!”

Now this is where it gets really cool. Crush starts asking to talk to people in the theatre, while the host runs around the theatre with a microphone so everyone can hear. The entire show is completely interactive, which is just really cool, because how many times have you interacted with a character from a beloved movie?

And of course, the best part of the experience is learning to talk turtle! Dude, cha! Catch ya later, dudes!

Up The Hill!

I recently discovered that there is a fairly large public park very close to my home. What’s more important is that this park is located in the foothills which means it’s time to get on the mountain bike again! :)

It’s a good 3 mile ride up hill to the back entrance of the park. I made the trip and explored a few horse trails, but didn’t want to push myself much further since I’ve been out of mountain biking for awhile.

The view from the top

I’ve always liked to mountain bike, but in the past few years, I’ve never really lived near a good place to bike that I could ride to from my home. Looks like my wish has been granted, so it’s time to get out there and see how fast I can break my neck!

Pool Blogging

So I get this idea that I should take my tablet out to the pool and see if I can pick up my wireless network. Bingo! Next idea: put a towel underneath the tablet so I can wipe my hands and keep the keyboard from getting wet. Works like a charm.

So here I sit on my pool barstools and typing away. Why, oh why you ask? Because I can. So there. :)

Actually, I've been in the pool a lot lately. After a run, or today's mountain bike ride, I jump in and cool off. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at idling for all that long and poking around in the pool without some friends to talk to or something to do gets boring so I retire to the house. So having a poolside computer is right up my alley!

I’m pretty happy that this works. I’ll just have to try and avoid turning into a prune!

eBay Searches

I’m sure the functionality I just stumbled upon on eBay has been around for quite some time. It just makes sense.

Currently, I’m improving my wardrobe, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is that my career may be moving in a direction that requires me to be in front of clients on a regular basis. I’m beginning by wardrobe empire building by collecting Allen Edmonds shoes. I’ve always been a big fan of these shoes because I have a large foot (13 E) and I will go through a poorly made shoe in a matter of months. The 3 pairs of Allen Edmonds shoes I’ve owned have lasted at least 2 years, and that’s with almost constant wear.

The downsides of these shoes are the price at $300 a pair, which is what I’ve paid for each before now. Enter eBay. eBay has this really cool option to create a search, save it, and then have it run daily for you and e-mail you any new listings. Very cool! So I now have a search that looks for “Allen Edmonds 13 E” shoes. I’ve already won two auctions; one for under $100! Yea! What’s even better is that there’s generally very little bidding on these auctions because I would think that 13 E’s are a fairly small subset of the eBay buying world.

In any event, two thumbs up for eBay for providing this automatic daily search feature that requires no interaction from me.

Adventures in Cooking: Wild Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

The one word to describe preparing this dish: deceptive. Risotto is one of those foods I’ve always enjoyed at a nice restaurant but had never tried to at home. I was perusing Alton Brown’s recipes on Food Network, and ran into this recipe.

The deceptive part comes into play in the preparation. It’s very simple to make; or so it would have you think. Essentially put the rice in a pan, add some stock and wine, a little heat and let the rice take its time soaking up the liquid.

The recipe indicated that I’d be done in about 40 minutes. An hour later or so, it looked like it was finally done. However, upon tasting, it still had just a hint of a mealy taste, so I think it needed to spend even more time in the pan. Or perhaps I wasn’t using enough heat?

The other downside of this dish is that I didn’t have access to wild mushrooms and used regular instead. I know that really is no substitute, and it definitely came across that way when tasting.

I’d like to be able to rate this recipe, but I can’t, simply because I don’t think I prepared it right. It was still good enough to eat, but I didn’t have seconds and ended up tossing the rest of the batch. I’ll give this another shot in the near future and let you know my results!

Memories of Running

For me, life has a way of being dormant for long periods of time, followed by short periods of high stress. A volcano if you will. It’s at these times that I turn to running.

During Marine Corps boot camp, there were 2 things that I always looked forward to: church and our daily run. Church was always a pleasant experience, because the Drill Instructors didn’t attend. It did not matter if you had any religious beliefs; going to church gave you an entire hour away from the people that made your life a living hell. Everyone went.

To relive the stress in boot camp, I always looked forward to the runs. Here you were pushed to excel and to yell! Ultimately, you knew that the run would end and it’d be right back to living hell, but it was a short reprieve.

I had never been a big running fan before joining the military, but since then I’ve always seemed to fall back into running when life notches up the intensity, without asking for permission first. And life certainly did not ask permission recently.

Lately, life is definitely offering up its challenges, and I push back with a run. I think the key for me is that I let myself be emotional while running. When the emotions get to be overwhelming, I sprint, and it’s like they’re burned from me. It’s almost that I’m purging these feelings by sheer will.

I’ve got to go; I have a date with my running shoes.

Adventures in Cooking: Sweet & Sour Pork

Well, I'm back. Sort of. Work is still busy, but I also wanted to chronicle some of the cooking I'm trying out right now. I figured the blog would be the perfect place to review the dishes that I'm making, so that if I want to refresh my memory on how well or badly a receipt went, I can just search here.

Today's Adventure in Cooking is Alton Brown's Sweet & Sour Pork. Usually, when I'm looking for recipes to try, I rely on Alton Brown and then I look at the comments to his receives on Food Network. Alton's Sweet & Sour Pork recipe received rave reviews, so I gave it a go.

Ugh. There's a lot of prep work that goes into this dish, including an overnight marinade. This should bring a lot of flavor to the party, but what ends up happening is that the sour sauce ends up overpowering all of the other flavors. The sauce is ketchup based, which I found to be very creative, however the final sauce is very salty. That salt prevents the more subtle flavors from ever getting to your taste buds.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate this dish a 5 because of the sauce. If I can come up with a suitable replacement for the sauce, then I'd probably give it another shot.

Busier Than a One Armed Paper Hanger

I have a new admiration for some of the bloggers out there. There are several that I read where I know the authors are ridiculously busy. Somehow, they still manage to get entries posted to their blogs, and insightful ones at that.

For the two people that read my blog (and I am exaggerating the readership), please know that work is absolutely over the top busy right now, but in a good way. I hope to update my blog often, but that’s just a hope with no foundation in reality.

Vertical Coffin

This book was penned by the legendary Stephen J. Cannell. I think everyone is familiar with his writing for television shows, but this is the first time I’ve run across a novel of his, although he’s written many.

Vertical coffin is the term police officers use to describe doorways. Doorways are often one of the most dangerous places for a cop, because they often don’t know what they are dealing with until sometimes it is too late.

But don’t let the title let you think that this is just a mishmash of stories describing officer incidents at doorways. It is, but this story centers around the politics and fighting over jurisdiction between the LAPD, ATF and LASO (Sheriff’s Office). As the story progress, we’re horrified to be witnessing an almost gang war erupt between the ATF and LASO’s SWAT teams, as their members are sniped at their homes by the very same weapons that they use on the job.

So how was this book: Outstanding. I love books that have the ability to really flesh out characters without slowing down the story. And this story is just, well, wow! Let’s just say that the story involves everything from Harley Davidson motorcycles to F/A-18 air strikes.

Usually after my commute, I’m completely ready to get out of the car. This is one of those audio books that had me sitting in my car waiting to hear what happened next.

Go get this book now!

The Memory of Running

I just finished up listening to the unabridged audio book of “The Memory of Running” by Ron McLarty.

At the end of the audio book, there is a lengthy interview with the author (pretty cool feature of an audio book). He mentions that since he is an actor and playwright, he often reads his writing aloud after he completes part of it to make sure it’s moving along as he intends. His opinion is that this book was really meant to be read aloud to be appreciated. I agree.

I really enjoyed this book, although I think it would have most likely made me miserable actually reading it. I’m not much of a reader, mainly because any time I do pick up a book for reading, it’s usually a technical manual. I read enough of those that I just don’t view reading as a leisure activity. It’s work for me.

The book really isn’t so much about the main character, Smithy, but about the people he meets and interacts with. I think most people can understand the main character as someone who just didn’t amount to much, and we’re happy to go along for the ride while he puts some meaning into his life.

The style of writing lends itself to many stories from the past, if not more so than the present. Because there are so many different interactions with other characters, it’s difficult to describe exactly why I liked this book so much. It must be the variety, and that the scenery and people are constantly changing which moves this read along.

I especially like that I feel that this story could have happened. It stays based in a "could have happened" reality, and didn't try to become a over the top "failure to astounding success" type of story. The ending was satisfying, but I wouldn't call it a happy ending, nor sad. Again, this book is difficult to describe, because it's a rare form that doesn't try to fill any of the well-known templates for modern novels.

Yes, I realize I'm being vague, so I leave you with this: I recommend the audio book to anyone, and the actual book to anyone that enjoys a good read but doesn’t need a compelling story to “hook” them into the book.

Los Angeles Angels

Okay, I think that changing the name of the Angels to the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" was a "whatever" moment for me. In any event, the owner of the Angels has gotten his wish and all of the media has started referring to the Angles as the "Los Angeles Angels".

It's just really, really weird looking at the scores and just seeing "Los Angeles". I've never liked the Dodgers much, and having to mentally seperate the Angels and Dodgers on a daily basis is annoying.

Whatever.

Happiness

One of my favorite radio personalities is April Winchell. She's definitely one of the funniest people on the radio. Unfortunately, she doesn't do much radio at the moment, so I like reading her blog.

Yesterday she posted about happiness, and I think she's more right than wrong in her assessment.

Plane Crash

A plane crashed last Monday in the next city over from where I live. In reading the accounts from the local newspaper, I get the sense that this accident was entirely avoidable.

According to weather.com, sunset was 5:42 p.m. In the newspaper article, they reported the following; my comments below each bullet:

1. That the instructor was planning on practicing takeoffs/landings from Redlands and San Bernardino airports.

This makes sense. If you want to carry passengers at night, you're required to make 3 full stop landings within the previous 90 days at night. The aircraft left at 6:30 p.m. and it would have been getting dark by then. If my memory serves, the whole area around the mountains was very hazy. Not a good time to be flying, and especially at night. Just the presense of some haze/light fog is a good indication that the dewpoint is close to the temperature, and as soon as the sun goes down: voila, fog city.

2. That a fuel problem was a possible cause.

Yep, fuel may have been a problem, but I'd guess that fog + night was the culprit. Plus, if you've ever flown up near Yucaipa, it's a box canyon, albeit a wide one. If you're not paying attention, the ground can catch up with you while you won't have much room to manuver. Again, this is a situation that difficult to handle on a clear day.

3. That a possible motive for where the plane was found was perhaps they were going to make instrument approaches.

WTF? You're going to start instrument approaches over a city that is next to a mountain? There are no instrument approaches there because there's mountains! The only airport in the area that has an approach is San Bernardino International, and you start that approach just to the east of Ontario airport. That's about a 50 mile distance from where the plane was found.

And if you're shooting approaches, you most likely are tuned into air traffic control. At the very least to be aware if there are any other aircraft on that approach. So, you'd have someone to talk to when you get yourself lost in the fog and hopefully they can save your butt. Obviously, that didn't happen.

It'll be interesting to read the NTSB report. Actually, it probably won't. My guess is that it will say the same thing I have in a more formal manner.

Sand

Interesting use of sand as art. The artist turns the composition of his art into the focal point of the performance. Fascinating.

Jungle Cruise Jokes

The Jungle Cruise at Disneyland is truly a relic. What keeps it entertaining is the myriad of jokes that the boat captains have at their disposal to use throughout the ride.



Someone has done an outstanding job of cataloging them here. Enjoy!

Taxing Commuters

Not just no. Hell no. Let me get this straight. I'll have to pay additional tax because I get the pleasure of living in this nightmare of urban sprawl called Los Angeles? You've got to be kidding. So my $10,000 a year to the People's Republic of California isn't enough? You need more? Because you can't manage a surplus, it's my problem?

Tivo To Go

Over the weekend, my Tivo finally received the software update so that I can now transfer television programs to my PC. My first reaction to this was, um, okay neat. Then I realized I could archive as many Good Eats shows as possible!

For example, we tried to make fudge over the Christmas holiday this year using Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network. Well, the recipe is just not enough. There's some very important technique that is in the show but not in the receipe, such as not moving the pan at all so the sugar molecules don't bunch up. We ended up with a brick of chocolate at the bottom of our pan. Not good eats at all.

Hopefully, over the next few months, I'll have a catalog of all of these shows and more importantly, be able to refer to them whenever the receipes are unclear.

Best Translator Ever

I'm simply at a loss for words for this use of technology. Enjoy!

Dancing with the Devil

Good capitalist that I am, I'm giving Google AdSense a try. That's those links over to the right. I'd like to say that the motivation for this is pure geek, but hey, if someone throws some cash my way then all the better.

I will have to say that it's fairly interesting seeing which ads are run on the site. Right now, it seems that ads for Disney World are getting the most exposure. Interesting. What ads are you seeing?

Guilty Pleasures

iTunes is probably one of the most evil creations ever. Why? Because by browsing their store, I happened across a lot of music that I absolutlely loved while in high school. And with one click, it was sitting on my hard drive and playing loudly through my speakers. Loudly.

I doubt I would have made a purchase like this browsing my local music store, or even Amazon.com. The folks at iTunes have done a great job of presenting their store in a way that you can really see a lot of various artists and of course, preview their tunes.

So, I'm throughly enjoying Caught Somewhere In Time by Iron Maiden as I'm writing this. So wrong. So very wrong. Love it.

Firefox

After originally working with the beta version of Firefox, I went back to Internet Explorer because of various formatting issues that I encountered with Gmail. I figured they'd figure out the problem for the final release, so I'm finally back to Firefox, and they have fixed those problems.

I'm glad I went back, because they have an Extension for the browser called Flashblock. Normally, I don't care if a site is using Flash or not, but I heavily use Terminal Services to access my machine. If you've ever used Terminal Services and visited a Flash enabled site, you quickly get to experience what it used to be like downloading data at 300 baud. Essentially, your session is rendered useless for several minutes while Flash runs through it's various frames.

Don't install Flash then, you say. Bah! Then everytime you visit a site with a Flash animation, you get treated to a install dialog box asked you to go find a way to install it.

I had been using a hack that just pointed the swf extension to 0.0.0.0 which stopped it from running the annoying Flash files. But the way that Firefox has implemented the solution is elegant. It will just display the box where the animation would normally play with an "F". If you hover over the "F", it will turn to a play button, and I have the option of determining if I want the animation to play or not. Very nice!

I'm a Firefox convert. Gosh, maybe I'll have to buy a Mac now and start writing a screenplay on the patio of the local Starbucks.

Nah.

Image

Two weeks and two extremes. Last week, I was at Walt Disney World for Lotusphere. Not only am I a certified Disney geek, but am also a real geek, so I felt right at home in this atmosphere. Fast forward to this week, and I’m smack dab in the middle of probably the trendiest area of Hollywood: The Sunset Strip.

My hotel is flanked by the House of Blues and The Comedy Store. Not to mention that the hotel restaurant, Chi, is partly owned by Justin Timberlake. Everyone is very, very busy trying to look hip and mostly succeeding. For my part, today I’m wearing my Mickey Mouse t-shirt, jeans and brown jacket. Tragically, woefully not hip.

I don’t think I’ve seen so many exotic cars in my life, and I’ve spotted them all within a block of the hotel. Me, I drive a dusty Honda Civic. Not even close to hip.

What’s interesting is that all this “hipness” is very inviting. I can see how people can land in this area and fall in love with it. It has its charm. This is something I never thought I’d say of anywhere in Los Angeles.

Hollyweird

After arriving home very, very, very early on Saturday morning from Florida, I'll be out of the office for yet another week. While at the conference last week, the folks back home were busy trying to get a recently approved project up and running. They weren't kidding and I'm finding myself hopping in the car this evening and heading to Hollywood. Since the training is during regular business hours and the drive would just be too much to handle, I grabbed a room in Hollywood.

On one hand, I'd rather be in the office this week to catch up from last week. On the other hand, I've only done day trips to Hollywood, so the evenings should be interesting. We'll see how out and about I get.

Oh, and about those photos from last week. The wireless cloud at the convention, quite frankly, sucked. I gave up even trying somewhere on Monday. The photos will be posted shortly, when I can find a spare minute.

Home

I recently moved to a new house that is within a few miles of the city that I grew up in. It’s great being around old friends again, and quite frankly, feeling “home.” I’ve been a bit of a nomad for the past 10 years, so I’ve had a hard time considering anywhere “home.” From the Marine Corps to the Silicon Valley to Los Angeles and finally back home, in a desert community outside of Palm Springs.

The point was firmly made to me yesterday when I stopped in at the local barber shop to get my haircut before heading to the conference next week.

I had never met him before, but the barber was:

• An uncle of a good friend in high school.
  
• Was a Sheriff’s Deputy for 30 years, and knew one of my best friends who is currently a Deputy and his entire family, including their grandfather.

I was even able to deduce his last name without him telling me it, just by who he knew.

They say you can’t go home again. “They” are wrong.

Lotusphere 2005

It's that time of year again; the annual pilgrimage to Walt Disney World to geek out with 8,000 complete strangers for Lotusphere. This year, my plan is to take photos each day and make my best effort to have them online the same day. We’ll see how well that works out.

I’m leaving late Friday night and arriving Saturday morning, where I’ll meet up with a long time friend to soak up what The Mouse has to offer. Our first stop will be to the Rose & Crown where we'll imbibe a well poured Guiness accompanied by fish and chips. On Sunday the non-stop geek-o-rama begins until Thursday afternoon. Then back home on Friday evening.

My interest with the Lotus Workplace product has piqued, and I’m very interested in hearing more details on how this product integrates with the rest of the IBM Lotus technologies.

What the?

Okay, I'm back to blogging, but maybe I shouldn't be about this! I was wandering over at Rocky Oliver's weblog, and noticed he took one of those incredibly stupid time wasting irrelevant personality tests. I just couldn't resist!

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

After looking at the results, I should have resisted. As I've said in the past, I'm completely in touch with my inner asshole, so perhaps the assesment is correct. Whatever. Time to go waste time elsewhere, like getting some programming done.