Category: Personal

Here I sit with a steaming mug of green tea

Before me, the timer counting off a few minutes,

As the tea steeps and the flavor invades the

Boiling hot water.

A day has mostly passed, the late afternoon Sun

Passing its final rays on, the heat coming through

A high window and comforting my shoulders,

Relaxing the tension.

My mind simply wanders from thought to thought

With none sticking or catching on the main road,

Just another day with cool grey morning clouds

Leading to now.

Lift up your eyes, breathe in the aroma, now the

Tea is ready for drinking–feel the tangy bits of

Different flavors hitting your tongue–lift your mug,

Boiling hot water.

Efficient Shotgun Sequencing Provides Dog Genome reports that humans share more of their genetic heritage with dogs than mice. Bow wow, baby!

Also in the mammal family: “You’re a cute little bunny and you have to avoid the other bunnies from stomping on you and at the same time try to stomp as many opponents as possible.” Jump n Bump

For the true Star Trek: The Next Generation fans only comes this 48 disc, complete seven season box set containing all 176 TNG episodes made. So let’s see, 176/24 = 7.33 days watching 24 hours per day, no sleep. That would be a true test for the beyond the pale fans for sure. Fortunately for us Americans, we won’t be tempted (according to the information available so far) since the set will only be released, and coded for, European DVD machines.

Two new strips, six panels in all:

Bruce turned 54 years old today. Amazing that he’s still make new, evolving, relevant music compared to so many of the ‘older’ rockers who’re out there just pulling in the cash for Greatest Hits and Live repackagings and an umpteenth tour playing those same songs. Mr. Jagger, Mr. Townsend, Mr. Simmons, do you hear me?

I watched the appellate arguments made to the Ninth District Court today, which was just a coincidence since the TiVo Suggests algorithm for who knows what reason thought I’d want to see a soap opera called Passions but the local NBC affiliate preempted that with the live court proceedings. Quite interesting to watch Lawrence Tribe, a very famous lawyer, make the argument on behalf of the plaintiffs, while the State of California was represented by a no-name nudnick from the Attorney General’s staff.

Nothing I heard was surprising or shocking but this was my first viewing of such a proceeding. Or rather my first viewing of a real appellate proceeding as opposed to the fictional versions on such TV shows as Law & Order, which turned out to be a reasonable facsimile once I made allowance for the time constraints and such.

My opinion is that the whole recall is a farce foisted on the people of this state by a stupid, greedy, rich Republican moron (Darrell Issa). Anything, such as a challenge on constitutional grounds as this case is, that can make the likelihood that Gray Davis will remain governor or at least be replaced by another Democrat is a good thing. Whichever side loses will almost certainly appeal to the US Supreme Court, meaning whether or not the vote will take place on October 7 will remain up in the air until almost the day of the vote, especially if the Supremes actually hear the appeal.

Update, 9/23: Sadly, the judges wasted no time at all in overturning the decision to delay the recall vote. According to the NYT, “The speed of the full court’s ruling today, and the tone of the 13-page document, suggested that the 11 judges had not agonized over their decision.” I had hoped for a few days of amusing feverish speculation before what many commentators saw as this pre-ordained verdict. Will the ACLU go the final step and if they do will the Supremes take it on? My coffee buddy says no but one can hope.

Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. That amusing line from The Outlaw Josey Wales is the fundamental requirement of getting and retaining my patronage. So, for instance, any company that sends me spam is off the list. Tiger Direct sold me TS1’s new PC back in February immediately added me to their Annoy Daily list and so that’s that for them. Companies that think I’d ever buy financial advice or products or any prescription or ‘natural’ substitutes for prescription drugs from spam mail, making inane or illegal promises in their email, are just morons.

Treating me with at least a modicum of respect is next and I don’t mean me only as an individual but also as part of the general mass of consumers. For years, for instance, I’ve avoided Exxon because of how they handled the whole Valdez incident–not that the company had a spill but the BS coverup the tried to pull afterwards–and now I’d put MCI in the same list. Smith Barney, which I use for brokerage, is tilting on the edge but then again I’m not sure any of their competitors are significantly better.

That also means treating me with respect as an individual consumer. Century Theaters is now off my list because of what happened yesterday. We were watching a Matchstick Men matinee in a mostly empty theater when the man of a couple sitting in the row in front of us jumped up and left the room after giving me an unhappy look. Next thing I know, a manager is in my face telling me that if I say another word he’ll throw me out. For whispering?!?!?! I sat stewing and watched the rest of the movie, then spoke with the same manager and his boss after. Their claim is that talking violates some unstated rule but other kinds of noise which can be much louder (laughing, screaming) do not. And, of course, the managers simply took the word of the other customer that I actually did speak, never asking me if that was true or not.

This is really a shame since the Century Theater over on Shoreline has been my favorite place to see movies for the last six years, not to mention the only good theater in a reasonable drive. I suppose I’ll mostly just wait even more often for films to show up on cable and make few exceptions that’ll justify the extra drive. Not going to miss Return of the King, that’s for sure, but on the bubble shows like Kill Bill and Matrix: Revolutions will have to get fantastic reviews and word of mouth to get my box office dollars.

One film I won’t be upset about not seeing, if it ever does come out, is The Passion, Mel Gibson’s self-financed Jesus fantasy. There are plenty of articles I could cite but the one by Frank Rich in today’s NY Times will do just fine. “Modern secular” Jew is as good a way to describe my religious beliefs as any though I remain blissfully unaware of any conspiracy that targets this once favorite movie star. Gibson clearly doesn’t want my money and I’m glad not to give it to him.

I’m not a huge music downloader, grabbed a few songs off newsgroups (never used any of the P2P networks) last year, but the deviant behavior of the major music companies behind the RIAA has certainly turned me off too. I haven’t bought the new Zevon CD and that’s one of the reasons; Warren, after all, has passed beyond the point of caring. I do wonder what will choice I’ll make when the next Springsteen is released, or even the Beatles’ Let It Be…Naked in a couple of months. There are some promising independent music companies but for better or worse I have yet to hear music from them that I enjoy enought to buy.

Insulting commercials are another huge turnoff. Such as the current FedEx TV ad which puts down people with MBAs for no good reason and not in a way I find amusing, since I do have an MBA I worked hard to earn. Comcast ads that simply lie about the difficulties one might have using satellite TV service are really irritating though for the time being I don’t have a good alternative to using them since SBC seems unable to get me working DSL.

Another company I’d rather not do business with, but have little alternative at this time, is KnightRidder and its San Jose Mercury News. Though I do wonder if the San Francisco Chronicle, the one possibility, would be any different on my hot button issue (though early evidence, such as this article, is not promising). That issue is the way the paper deals with illegal aliens, persistently labelling them undocumented immigrants, and how the editors and columnists refuse to respond to reader complaints about this farce.

Then there’s a popular restaurant here in Mountain View, Tony & Alba’s, which I haven’t really eaten at in years because of their poor attitude towards clean utensils and glasses, and their poor response to my complaints about such. Being on Atkins and that place being an Italian restaurant, pizzeria really, means I wouldn’t be eating there anyway. But still a good example of how not to take care of customers. A good contrast is PHPWebHosting, whom I’ve used to host this site since its inception and recommended to others, who respond very well to problem tickets almost every time and when they don’t, always have an apology and reasonable explanation.

Now some people, having put up with my rant all the way to this point, may ask “What about Microsoft?” Aren’t they a guilty enough collective of 55,000? Probably, I’d answer. However, despite the many arguments about Linux or Mac that you’d care to make, I can’t make that switch for practical reasons. And, bottom line, I don’t agree (enough) with those arguments to change even if I could.

Finally, nothing beats a good product or service at a good price.

Nicholas Cage and Sam Rockwell are con artists–Matchstick Men being a little-used alternative name for the profession–and all of a sudden Cage hooks up with the 14 year old daughter (Allison Lohman) he knew was a possibility but had never met. He struggles with his Dadness. He tries to get better with the help of a psychiatrist. Cage and Rockwell try to pull a big con on Bruce McGill but the ending has a twist or two. Or three.

Ridley Scott is much better known for directing bigger, more active movies like Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, and Alien. Though he did do fairly well with the lighter Thelma and Louis, got to give him that. But while there are some funny and some touching moments in Matchstick Men, almost all between Cage and Lohman, there was just too much confusion over whether this is about a father finding his daughter or a con man learning he no longer has the heart for the con.

Somewhat recommended

The actual asshats who provide the mailing services are greasy, slimy, sleazy and difficult to get at. But what about their clients< the people and companies actually selling the products on whose behalf the spam is sent? Why can't we go after them? Since they have to have a physical presence in order to accept payments (and potentially make shipments), the piles of moron shit must be accessible. Credit card companies can be pressured to rescind their accounts. How about it?

Sex Inspectors on the Way, Australian talk host breast feeds on live TV: Can only be read, not mocked.

Reason not to stay: Wack jobs who are taking over the country.

I am not the eggman, they are not the eggmen.

I am not the walrus, goo goo k’choo.

Gezundheit. I’m not even crying.

Robert Rodriguez puts aside his spy kiddies and gets back to his adult film series with the third film featuring his guitar playing, gun-toting El Mariachi, Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Antonio Banderas stars, along with Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe and Selma Hayek and WhereIsHeNow Mickey Rourke in a nice cameo. Most of you will probably be more familiar with 1995’s Desparado, the second film, than with the low-budget indie original El Mariachi.

Writer/director Rodriguez–who also produced, edited and scored OUATIM–got a big budget to make this one and the money’s not hard to see on the screen, plenty of big explosions and wire work fight choreography for sure. The problem is that it’s all show and little substance. I kept thinking ‘This is a very slow moving cartoon’ as it played. There’s too much voiceover, too many flashbacks (including every single seen in which Hayek appears), and too little coherence.

Not recommended

Seems like today would be an auspicious one for people who believe in numerology. 9/18/2003. Three squared is nine, nine times two is 18. Two cubed is one eight. Is this a clue or just another 42? You decide. Bonus link: BillG is the AntiChrist, proven by Numerology!

Have you been watching this series on FX? I can’t quite make up my mind whether it’s good or not, but I think the appeal is sort of like hanging around an accident to see the bloody mess. Seriously, the show pushes the envelope further than any non-premium cable television show and sometimes I think the whole thing is an excuse to show as much fascinating gore and near nakedness and sex. But with a plot thrown in and a bit of characterization. Which is the reason (I think) I keep watching.

Some completely unenlightened soul who thinks that selling crap via spam is a worthwhile use of his/her lifespan decided to make my day fairly annoying. One standard piece of these asshat’s toolbox is forging the sender information in their spam messages and today they decided to use a few made up addresses at a domain I own (but don’t actively use for now).

Of course not all of the addresses in their lists are accurate although the mail server is specified correctly. So sending email to 45west@example.com, where example.com is a working mail server but 45west is non-functional, means that the mail server will attempt to be nice and tell the sender there’s a problem with delivering the mail–I’m sure you’ve all gotten such messages. But when you receive literally hundreds of these bounce messages in a single day, that really sucks.

Checking with Support at my (reasonably excellent) hosting provider PHPWebHosting.com, I found there’s little to be done about this but on the bright side spammers tend to only use a given domain once. And people/groups that keep the spam blacklists understand this and add domains to their database based on the sender’s IP, not the return email address.

[Another Letter to the Editor of the SJ Mercury News I’ve submitted regarding this column by Joe Rodriguez entitled ‘Colorblind’ Ward Connerly has a case of selective vision]

I’ve been reading Joe Rodriguez’s OpEd pieces in the MN for some time now and am a bit confused. In today’s column for instance, he writes:

“That’s right, we should be able to throw innocent children out of school because their parents jumped the border rather than starve.”

So I guess Rodriguez is arguing that any individual who has a principled objection to any law can disobey that law. If I can’t find work, I should be able to rob a grocery store to put food on my table rather than starve?

I thought that in situations where one disagrees with the law, one obeys the laws as they are and works to change them. Further, I’m not clear that people in Mexico are actually starving, so this column throws emotional tinder on the fire simply because it reinforces his position. If the truth is otherwise, why is the Merc not reporting it? Why is Rodriguez sitting in a comfortable office in San Jose rather than getting the story down south?

Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, here we are at Camp Grenada:

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an preliminary injunction Monday stopping California’s Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election, in the latest unexpected twist of the unprecedented ballot to decide whether Gov. Gray Davis remains in office. “The secretary of state is enjoined from conducting an election on any issue on October 7, 2003,” a three-judge panel ruled Monday. The court stayed its order for seven days to allow the parties to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What does it matter know that we know Ah-nuld came to this country illegally? Odd, then, that he would be against laws that benefit illegal aliens. Next, do not forget that Bill Clinton was in state yesterday preaching in favor of Davis. I do mean preaching, the event took place at a church in Los Angeles with a gospel choir backing the ex-Prez. Anyway, if the recall is delayed until March (the next possible date after Oct. 7), it’s all over for the Republicans. Which would make me cry but not out of sadness.

The SF Chronicle gangs up on Scott McNealy for an interview that, unsurprisingly, is not at all nice and polite. If only things like this could get the (SUNW) stock price back where it belongs, in the mid-$20s.

I want to say that wide receiver Cedric Wilson cost the 49ers today’s game against St. Louis; all he had to do was go down after making a last-second reception inside the Rams’ 30 yard line with three seconds or so left. A timeout would have stopped the clock and let us kick a moderate, but not too difficult, field goal for a 27-24 win. Instead, Wilson ran sideways across the field in a vain attempt at glory, the Rams won the coin toss and drove to the Niners’ nine and kicked the winning field goal.

But that would put a little too much blame and emphasis on one play. The 49ers were called for well over a hundred yards in penalties, including a really unnecessary 15 yard face mask violation in OT, that time and again gave St. Louis better field position or put us out of it. And the defense, in particular the secondary, gave up way too much space in the second half after a sterling opening 30.

Hopefully next week against Cleveland the result will be more favorable.