Category: Personal

Get Schmart

Are you into prototyping circuit boards? If so, check out SchmartBoard and their patent-pending pre-traced printed circuit boards that are connectable like building blocks. My personal electronics expert and I went to the company’s initial presentation today over in Milpitas and found their offering quite interesting and valuable. Not to mention that one of the founders, Neal Greenberg, is a friend and a real mensch. Good stuff.

Cheap Viagra, Vicodin, Xanax, Prescription Drugs, and Penis Enlargement Pills!!! Bigger Breasts!!

As JeremyZ suggests, I’m joining in his Screw the Spammers day effort with this entry. I’m pretty much just copying his post…

You know you want ’em CHEAP, right?!?!

As noted here, I’ve decided to play the spammers’ game for a day to see if we (bloggers) can out-spam the spammers.

Won’t you join the fun? Post a entry with a similarly spammy subject on your blog. TrackBack to Jeremy’s entry. Link to this one. I’ll link to yours. Let’s abuse our PageRank in a way that’d make the spammers jealous.

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Boomtown boom boom

NBC can really suck my ass. I mean it. Bad enough they moved Boomtown from Sunday to Friday but for them to now put the series on hiatus for (at least) three weeks due to low ratings after only two showings this season is sad. Perhaps it’s for the best, sort of a mercy killing, since the network already forced creators Jon Avnet and Graham Yost to stop using the Rashomon-like multiple perspectives that gave Boomtown its distinctive flavor.

Microsoft: How to tell if a Microsoft Security-Related Message is Genuine

If you are receiving a few dozen of this annoying fucking infested messages every day like I am, take a gander at the article Microsoft has posted on how to recognize them. Fortunately my Norton Anti-virus installation has caught every single one and I’m not foolish enough to run their attachments anyway, but I sure would appreciate a chance to shove my fist down the throat of whoever’s sending them, repeatedly.

At least this part is over

Politics never end, probably why they call them election cycles, but today at least marks the end of one. Will Davis retain his office, or be replaced by Governator Ah-nuld or Cruz ’till You Lose? Too close to call, apparently, but I’m naturally pessimistic about the outcome. Pessimism being the appropriate emotion here since no matter who is governor next month, none of them are truly qualified or capable of doing what I think is a good job.

Still, we detoured during the Morning Coffee Stroll to the polling place inside a fire station. I think they moved the voting booths there, from a school across the street, because the Registrar is afraid so many ballots stuffed with so many lies will spontaneously combust. Anyway, for the record: no, Bustamante, no, and no; I’m even proudly wearing the I Voted sticker.

Say goodnight, Gracie

Can the A’s suck more in the playoffs? Seriously! Bases loaded with one out in the ninth and the next two batters strike out. You can say what you want but this makes nine games in a row where the team could have clinched a series and instead they lost. What’s wrong, boys?

How’d he know?

Conspiracy nutjobs sometimes turn their surreal gaze towards pro sports. Claiming, for instance, that the games are scripted, at least in their outcomes. The effort involved in doing so for only the major sports (NFL, MLB, NBA), even given the huge amounts of betting taking place, doesn’t seem to be justified–how would you keep the secret year after year with so many thousands of individuals involved? Nevertheless, listening to Dick Enberg’s play-by-play during the opening drive of today’s Raiders/Bears game and proclaiming that a first down was made several steps before it appeared obvious to me, the thought did come to mind. Then again, the Raiders do exist only in Bizarro Universe.

Tonight’s movie: Real Women Have Curves

Marketing executives have begun to realize that the Hispanic consumers make up more and more of the people spending money in America demographic, hence the numerous Spanish language cable networks, TV and radio stations, and newspapers. All good, all good, for sure but this also means more movies targeting the same audience, and Hollywood likes nothing better than turning out a good chick flick.

Now I’m not a chick, but I’ve seen and enjoyed my share of them. Sadly, Real Women Have Curves is only a chick flick and not a very good one. America Ferrera is quite appealing as the lead actress, playing Ana, a chubby Mexican girl graduating from high school in Los Angeles. Lupe Ontiveros also gives a real performance as Ana’s bitchy, bitter mother.

But even a chick flick needs things like plot and character development to succeed. 90 minutes is enough for the typical teenage-focused movie but writers Josefina Lopez and George LaVoo simply meander among the mother-daughter relationship, the business difficulties of the other daughter, Ana’s budding but meaninglessly (artificially?) shortcircuited romance, and her teacher’s (played by George Lopez) efforts to get her to attend a good university rather than simply repeat her mother’s life.

Director Patricia Cardoso is ultimately responsible for leaving us with little more than eye candy. Movies, the saying goes, are a director’s medium and I just never felt her hands shaping and guiding this film. From beginning to end, there is no change in how Ana relates to her mother, no change in how the mother sees her daughters or acceptance that what was the right choice for her 35 years earlier might not be the best option in the new millenium.

Not recommended

Letter on trusting Ah-nuld

A last minute letter to the editor at the Mercury News:

Several times now, when confronted with questionable behavior or choices, Arnold Schwarzenegger has said, literally, “Trust me.” Most recently in regard to the sources of the money that will repay his multimillion dollar bank loans but also in response to the accusations that he groped and otherwise sexually harassed numerous women. Why should we trust him? “You know me,” Arnold said. And while he has been a public figure for the last 30 years, the public has only had the opportunity to know him as an actor. Someone, that is, who lies for a living. What do we know about the real Arnold? With only three days left until the voting, instead of showing us the answer to that extremely important question, he seems to recede further and further into the distance.