Posts from — October 2005

I went to Chicago this weekend to visit Jean and GaryGary and Jean and their daughter Esme. I also got to see Brian Fitzpatrick and his wife Marie and my uncle Stanley. It was a quick trip, but it was quite nice. I’d never been to Chicago before and I picked a good weekend to go. It wasn’t cold at all and Gary and Jean had a “bonfire party” on Saturday.

I put up some pics but I really didn’t take as many as I thought I had. Unfortunately, they’re all not as interesting as the one of Batgirl and SpiderWoman. I was able to teach Esme to stick out her tongue and make a heavy-metal salute, but I need a faster camera to catch her in action.

I’ll definitely go back there one day- but I’ll make sure I go in the spring, summer or fall. The stories I heard about bundling up make me realize reinforce the fact that I’m a big wuss.

Check out who my mom got to meet.

Adam and I went to his parents’s summer camp long ago.

her email-

In case you received the photo I sent today…..Dad and I went to his downtown Rotary meeting….Dad rarely goes except he got notice that Kinky was coming and he invited me. I took my camera and Dad pointed me and told me to go say hello…..after much hesitation I did….he was very gentlemanly….stood and shook hands. I told him that our sons had gone to Echo Hill and he smiled and said “Really”….etc….I said he could count on several Schwartzman votes.


He said the important thing to him was that young people saw the importance of voting and returned to being interested in voting and who was voting, etc.



He was a good speaker….very funny and irreverent…..in a room filled with conservative, Republican, predominantly Anglo men…..A friend of Alfred’s left saying to Alfred that he wouldn’t stay in a room with anyone who didn’t remove his hat for the Pledge. Then, I heard a couple of Women on the way out criticize the club for even inviting him. They must not have heard that all major candidates are always invited….



He also concluded by reading his wonderful column that I sent both Adam and Kenneth called “The Hummingbird Man” which is about his parents…

I put up some pics from Saturday night on the pics section. There’s a set of pics from a happy hour that Jodi organized, and some pics from the party at Paul and Stef’s earlier that evening which was a grape stomp and harvest dinner party.

I’ll add more detail about Paul’s event because I’ve already gotten some questions about what we were doing exactly. I’ll try to get to that by Thursday. Today was a busy day at work.

I’m way behind in my movie “reviews”. I finally watched Sahara though and wanted to post something. Maybe I should wait until I have more time to write, but here’s what I think in a nutshell.

I read The Clive Cussler book Sahara first. I hadn’t heard of him, but Kevin H. and I were talking about watches over cigars one night. He told me about the Doxa Diver and the book tie in(s). After that, I picked up a bunch of used books at Green Apple, including a few Cussler books. They’re highly entertaining. The watch talk continued separately as it always does over Yahoo! IM and emails (including a flurry of exchanges with Cory S and Kevin H regarding dive watches, my being a moron for still not buying one, timezone.com, panerai and the Seiko 6138 and 6139. But that’s another blog story/post for another day. The point is that I feel I should be schizo for the movie review. Had I not read the book, I would’ve given the movie 3 or 4 stars. And if I were one of those hardcore Cussler fanboys from teh intarweb, I would have given it 0 stars. But I’m in the middle and I’m more objective. Sahara’s not the best movie, but it’s highly entertaining. It’s a bit formulaic and you can kind of tell where the movie’s going. But I thought it was filmed well and the pace really keeps things moving. That said, I know how greatly the book differs (don’t read this part Kevin/Lisa). And I mean it differs a lot. Once I saw the movie, I understood why the ever-fussy Cussler sued the production group over the script. There are huge differences in the plot, the setup and story. But you know what? To be fair, so what? There’s no way you could include everything from the book into the film. The Civil War story line would’ve taken so much screentime it would’ve left the film as a “Lincoln Lived, but in Africa! OMGLOLWTF?!?” story. The movie didn’t include the ruthlessness of Kazim and Massarde. They tried, but it wasn’t that clear. The movie left out the whole UN response team and army shootouts. But like I said- that’s fine. There’s so much in the book that you have to enjoy it on it’s own. And because of that, you have to have the movie stand on it’s own too. So I give it three magic asterisks. One each for Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, and the lovely Penelope Cruz. Oh, and an honorable star for the guy who played Rudi (Rainn Wilson). I could see them doing another NUMA movie. It’d be a good flick. If you don’t agree, go pick up some Cussler books, they’re pretty fun.

Frontline. Uggh. The name alone is enough to cause me to stop and think “something may not be right”. The show starts and I hear the narrator’s voice come on. Uggh. His voice causes fear. I hear his voice and pee the floor like that kid does when he hears Gary Sinise’s voice in Ransom. Actually, that kid could’ve just been scared of the nutty Gibson. . .

Anyway, you get my point. It’s an intense show. I never intend to watch it, but somehow I’m flipping channels and I hear that voice.. . . And . . I . . can’t . . . stop . . . watching . . .

Tuesday’s episode was The Torture Question. The first ten minutes were enough to cause me to get an ulcer. By the fifteenth minute I was taking pepcid and stealing anti-depressants from the volvo-driving neighbors. Minute 20 found me on the floor in the fetal position drinking bourbon, popping pepcid, eating welbutrin like they’re skittles and rocking myself back and forth while my arms are folded across my chest. By the end of the show I’m stunned and I am wondering how Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Scheuer, Col Pappas, Gen Sanchez and Gen Miller aren’t in prison.

Use the links and watch the show online. Maybe I’m wrong. But we should be doing something about this. We’re supposed to be the good guys. “Honor Bound. Defend Liberty.” isn’t just a slogan . . . .

Frontline and Veronica Mars. What an odd TV life I live. . . ahh, the wellbutrin’s kicking in right about now. . .I gotta stop watching that show (no, not Veronica).

Well, I was getting more and more nervous, so at 4 I called speakeasy.net to ask for a status. I figured if SBC blew me off last time at that time, it could’ve happened again, and I wanted my install coordinator to check.

“They already came by,” the tech told me over the phone. My heart sank and Mr. Swearingen was getting ready to come out. “But, they said they took care of everything, so we’re good to go on Friday for the switchover.”

As they say on irc, omgwtfbbq?!

I don’t know when or how, but at some point SBC got out to my place, and managed to check the box (hidden in a hallway you need a key to get to from the front gate) and go on their merry way. No call, no doorbell, no need for the sign I had put on the front door telling the SBC techs which doorbell to ring and my backup phone numbers. I’m shocked.

So the hard part’s over. Next up- the speakeasy guys just set me up on their circuit/routes and that’s it.

Hrm, actually there is one more thing- I still have to call and cancel services with SBC/PacBell. But I know from various sites to triple check the cancellation and get names of their agents that you speak to, in addition to (paper) copies of their notice of cancellation.

Apparently in CA (and other places), SBC has a habit of turning over information to collection agencies, regardless of the customer standing. Yuck

So I’m at home today waiting for the SBC/PacBell tech to come by to ‘release’ my line to me so I can switch service to Speakeasy.net. This is the second attempt at this. They were supposed to come by last week. But they didn’t. I was furious. I couldn’t stop cursing. I sounded like Al Swearingen for the afternoonthree days.

When you change service and go through the new service to get things done, SBC considers their calls as a certain status, like B2B or something. So they only communicate with the new service co, not with the resident. Basically this meant that my ‘install coordinator’ at speakeasy.net arranges things, which at first seems great.

But my install coordinator told me that SBC had arranged a date to come by (this was last week) so I should arrange to be there all day. Apparently SBC just makes a whole-day appointment, not a scheduled 3 hour window like other companies. This has something to do with the B2B status I believe.

So last week I was waiting and waiting all day for SBC to come by. At 4pm I finally call my install coordinator to ask what the deal was and why SBC’s cutting it so close. So he calls his contacts at SBC. You know what they told him?

SBC said their tech came by at 3:20pm. Rang the doorbell, got no answer. Called the house phone assigned to the line, got no answer. Called the cell phone contact number on the order from speakeasy (my cell number) and got no answer or voicemail. The worst part- I was home all day. I even ordered a pizza from Pizza Orgasmica so I wouldn’t be caught out at lunch if the techs came by. So I think SBC is a bunch of lying cocksuckers, as Al would say.

I’ll update later if they come by . . . .

I found an entry on 43 Folders.com that I actually liked and use, or at least have started to use. The entry is here. I already had little timer apps in my systray on my home machine and installed one on my work laptop. I already feel slightly (the slightest bit) more productive. Well, at least more focused. “Focus? Bofus?”

I really liked this ‘procrastination’ hack on 43F. I have timer apps in my systray already, so this kind of makes it easy for me to try. I’ll see if it makes me more productive in the late afternoons when I’m experiencing the sugarless blood coma effect.

My stupid dvd burner software kept crashing in linux. I finally figured out what to change. The stupid preferences in Gnome need to be set to not auto-mount any media that’s loaded. That’s it. Uggh. So if you’re running K3B on FC3, and you’re getting this kind of error -then check your preferences if everything else seems to be fine:

/usr/bin/mkisofs: Connection reset by peer. cannot fwrite 32768*1
or:
:-( unable to WRITE@LBA=43ce0h: Input/output error

In other news. . . Ubuntu Linux is using Zoomerang.com for an OSDL survey. Cool. Although I would’ve designed the survey a bit differently. . . . but that’s just because I’ve been paying more attention to online surveys lately.