Out of touch

President Bush said yesterday:
“I think there may be handfuls of people that are very emotional, but I think by far the vast majority of Americans are wanting to know whether they’re going to be able to work and whether or not the government’s doing its job of protecting the country, I don’t have a sense there’s a lot of anger.”
It is a sad day for the US when it’s leader can’t see what is obvious to every citizen…

Plan update

I noticed that Squidly was questioning my progress on the Two Week Plan.
Let’s take a look at the plan and what’s I’ve done so far.

    Daily

    • Feed fish – Fish is still alive
    • Eat fruit – I’ve eaten 6 apples in 7 days
    • Check/water plants – Plants are still alive
    • Dishes/paper/trash – No piles of garbage or filth in the house

    In the next two weeks

    • Dinner with Mom – On Sunday night we went to Souplantion
    • Remove stump from front yard – See picture below
    • Put up shelves in the girls room
    • See Zaitoichi, Donnie Darko, Napoleon Dynamite – Zaitoichi great, Napolean good
    • Go shoot my rifle
    • Go see a live band
    • Reprep laptop
    • Plan that blogging thing – See the previous post
    • Sell all that stuff on Ebay – Six items listed currently
    • Ride my bicycle
    • Try a Mochaberry at Borders – Good, but not worth the hassle of going into a Borders.
    • Do the hot sauce experiment

Here’s the removed stump. My chainsaw broke in the middle of getting this done and I had to finish it by hand with the maul. Yeah, I’m hard-core like that with cool wood chopping skills…

By my count that’s 6 and 2/3 out of the 12 I listed. That’s more than half with the toughest one, the stump removal done.
In light of this, I respectfully tell Squidly to ‘step off’.

Blog My Backyard

The Los Angeles Blogging community has never been one to get together in meatspace. For some reason, other cities llike New York and Seattle can draw hundreds to blogger get-togethers, but LA hasn’t done as well.
Meetups are lightly attended and even the blogging.la get-togethers draw small groups. The last big gathering of LA bloggers was the Live from the Blogosphere back in February 2003. I thought a little bit of how to get the bloggers together, but finding a place with cheap parking, cheap drinks, space and wifi is no easy task.
Then it hit me, I’ll take a page from Bruce Sterling’s book. Every SXSW, Bruce invites everyone to his house for beers. The party goes off without a hitch and everyone has a great time.
My backyard has plenty of wifi, parking is free, and I can cover some drinks and food…
So… LA Bloggers, you are cordially invited to Blog My Backyard. Tell your friends, blog it, gmail it to others, google me to see if I’m a freak, convince your significant other, and mark your calendar. I’m giving you plenty of notice.

Yep, on Saturday, August 21st feel free to stop by, have a drink and meet other LA Bloggers.
Just a couple of guidelines:
1) You need to be a blogger, or at least arrive with a bonafide blogger.
2) You must agree to wear a nametag. People want to know who you are and nametags let that happen. All the cool kids are wearing them.
3) You must not be stupid. This is my home and my wife is graciously letting me get away with a yet another kooky scheme.
I’ll provide some basic food and drinks, but feel free to bring something along with you to share. My daughters will be there, so if you want to bring your children, that would be great.

Details:
Date: Saturday, August 21st
Time: 2PM – 6PM
Location: [removed after event]
If you are fairly sure you are coming, let me know so I get a rough count of how many will be here.

What a Gmail invite gets you

Several weeks ago, I was looking at gmailswap and saw an offer that said “Shoot the guns from Counterstrike.” and I was intrigued. The offer was to go to a rifle range in LA and shot several assailed weapons commonly found in video games.
Sounded like a deal to me and I sent the invite. My new friend Jason, emailed back promptly with tons of details. This weekend I finally had enough free time and we met at the shooting range.
Jason is a huge gun enthusiast and has an encyclopedia like knowledge of firearms and gun laws. Truly an expert, he spent the day explaining almost every aspect of guns and what the gun law changes meant to collectors. When I heardcould him explain things about some of the bans on magazines I could see how useless the laws were. We went out to Angeles Shooting Range
I brought my rifle, a Mosin Nagant 91/30 and about 40 rounds of ammo. Jason had a ton of stuff and we promptly got set up on the rifle range.



This is a Colt HBAR aka AR-15, the civilian version of the M-16.
This is the kind of rifle the troops in Iraq are using.

The rifle was light and with little recoil compared to the other rifles.
Besides the comfortable feel, it was accurate and easy to fire repeatedly without drifting off target.

Click more to see what the rest of the day held…

Continue reading “What a Gmail invite gets you”

Making some sweet moolah with Uncle Rico…

Friday night I finally saw Napolean Dynamite.
The movie is a snapshot of a while in the life of a young teenager from Idaho in his struggle to fit in. Like the vast majority of us, Napolean is not one of the popular people at school. He got strange hobbies, a strange family and is uncomfortable around girls. Sounds like me in high school…
The filmmakers have a distinct style and simply let many of the scenes happen slowly rather than pushing through the story in rapid sequences with multiple camera angles. I’m sure there’s some film school term for it, but I found it refreshing.
The basic message of the film is that good things do happen to people. In the film, the characters tend to be accepting of these good things rather than waiting for great things instead. For example, older brother Kip finally meets his ‘internet girlfriend’ LaFawndah and falls for her. Rather than rejecting her because she is not perfect, Kip accepts that a good thing has happened and goes for it.
I think may of us could heed this message. Accepting the good things in life and not rejecting everything that isn’t perfect, is something all of use should do. I’m not saying people shouldn’t strive for what they want, but we should take joy and comfort in what we do have.
I had hoped for greatness and endless repeatable lines, but the film didn’t rise to that pinnacle. It’s a wonderful film, but it won’t raise to the stature of Ghostbusters or Caddyshack when it comes to phases that enter the general vernactular. The lines are funny, but without the visuals, they kinda fall flat in normal conversation. I mean, how many times does the opportunity come around to say “The defect in this one is bleach.“? It’s a funny line, but rarely used. Compare that to “Dogs and cats, living together…mass hysteria!” from Ghostbusters. The ghostbusters line can find it’s way into almost any conversation.
So go see this movie and enjoy the goodness.
My favorite line in the movie is by Kip: “Napoleon, don’t be jealous that I’ve been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I’m training to be a cage fighter.”

Los Angeles Insight

Jonah of LABlogs.com asks a few questions of LA bloggers.
1. How long have you lived in Los Angeles?
32 out of 37 years. 4 years in New York, 1 year in San Francisco.
2. Were you born here?
Yes, born and raised in the South Bay.
3. How long did you plan on staying here originally?
After I got married, we had planned to live in San Francisco forever.
4. How long do you plan on staying here now?
Probably forever. Possibly we could move after the girls finish school and college (16+ years…)
5. What keeps you here?
Works, schools, the weather, the tolerance of diversity.
6. What makes you want to leave?
The smog and the traffic.
7. What is your biggest suprise about living here?
That so many people hate LA in the rest of the country, especially New Yorkers.
8. What is your biggest disappointment about living here?
We don’t get to see fall colors and we don’t get to see winter become spring with the appearance of green. Back east, these times of the year are glorious.

Two week plan

I dropped Michele and the girls off at the airport this morning at 5AM. They arrived safely this afternoon in Cincinnati for a two week visit.
That means that the house will be empty and I will have no responsibilities outside of work for two weeks. This has happened in the past and I have not taken full advantage of the situation. Typically I would work late, grab some fast food on the way home, fall asleep on the couch around 8PM, wake up around midnight, putter around until 2 or 3 in the morning and then sleep. The next day I would be tired from staying up late, so I would fall asleep on the couch around 8PM, etc., etc.
This time I need to give myself a set of goals and make a plan to keep myself busy.
Here’s the rough list of things to do I came up with:

    Daily

    • Feed fish
    • Eat fruit
    • Check/water plants
    • Dishes/paper/trash

    In the next two weeks

    • Dinner with Mom
    • Remove stump from front yard
    • Put up shelves in the girls room
    • See Zaitoichi, Donnie Darko, Napoleon Dynamite
    • Go shoot my rifle
    • Go see a live band
    • Reprep laptop
    • Plan that blogging thing
    • Sell all that stuff on Ebay
    • Ride my bicycle
    • Try a Mochaberry at Borders
    • Do the hot sauce experiment

What else should I plan to do? Anyone else want to do these things?

Doom 3 Torrents


There is no excuse for this.
id Software has been a great company, making great games and consistently releasing source code of their games once they are a few years old.
To see this many people stealing their software is wrong.
Do you really think the 50,000 people you see here are still going to go out and buy the game?