Camcorderiffic

camcorder.jpg My last tool for the trip arrived the other day...well I use the word "arrive" in the loosest possible way. Anyway, I ordered a Panasonic camcorder a while back and waited anxiously for it to arrive from New Jersey. A little tip, though they may have good prices (I got my camcorder for $200 off MSRP) JustSayElectronics aren't very good. Their customer service was lousy, they couldn't figure out how to process a credit card and their interaction with UPS (who I might add, are my new favorite company) was shameful. Not a positive buying experience.Anyway the camcorder was due to arrive on Monday but I missed the UPS guy despite Andrew's best efforts to chase him in the CRV. Now usually UPS leaves the package on the doorstep which is cool because I don't have to be home and I don't have to leave a note. But my package required a signature which the vendor is supposed to tell me....but they didn't....so I didn't leave a note for UPS. Anyway, after talking to UPS, they said I could go pick up my package or wait til the next day and they'll redeliver. I opted to go pick it up. So Andrew and I drove to Stockton (wow) and picked it up. I was fully expecting to open the box and find a bunch of rocks. But to my pleasant surprise, there lay a new camcorder...and it worked! So now I should be able to preserve some of the memories that a camera might not be able to do justice. I only wish I had it in time for Fleet Week :)

MiniBlog

There's been a lot of times where I come across an interesting website or news tidbit that doesn't really warrant a full blog entry but I still wanted to share it with the four people that read this blog.SO, I did some MoveableType crafting and set up another blog which you can see to your right under the "Further Random Reading" header under the calendar. I'll add things as often as I discover them, which is usually several times a day. The link will take you directly to the site mentioned so beware! If you want to know how I did this, email me.

Fleet Week 2003

blueangels.jpgI was reminded by a colleague last week that the weekend of the 11th was the annual Fleet Week celebration in San Francisco. Fleet Week is, according to their site, when the "Bay Area pays tribute to the men and women of our nation's Navy and Marine services." It's really a massive event with well over a million people attending over the weekend. Mike and I really wanted to go because they usually have a fantastic airshow featuring the Blue Angels. So we got cracking early so we could find a decent place to settle. We got to the Embarcadero at about 9:30am and parked. We had a wander around and looked at some of the ships that were docked. At 11am they had the parade of ships which featured several Navy Destroyers and Frigates, as well as Coastguard ships and a Liberty Ship which took part in the Normandy landings. The airshow began promptly at noon with an F-15 and a Bearcat doing some formation flying before the Bearcat broke off and let the F-15 show off for a while. Now I haven't been to a good airshow in years so when that F-15 came screaming by, it gave me goosebumps. The highlight of the show for me was the Canadian Snowbirds display team. They were phenomenal. By far the best formation display I've seen in a long time, probably since the Red Arrows. The Blue Angels were good, but there were only 6 of them and it wasn't as dynamic and creative as the Snowbirds. All in all, very good day. Great to see an airshow again! I tooks some photos with my new camera which you can see at http://www.haebc.com/gallery/FleetWeek As you can see I'm still getting the hang of my camera ;-)

Governor this

So we have a new a Governor in California. Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger wiped the floor with anyone and everyone. The recall was a given. Frankly I'm not sure how I feel about it. I thought the whole idea or a recall was ridiculous and typically Californian to start off with. I also thought it set a dangerous precident going forward. No incumbent is safe, no state tax payer is immune from shelling out x million dollars to bankroll another recall election should the loyal citizens of a certain state get bored with their elected official.I've been told that our recall election was "democracy in action" - BS; it was a Republican with too much money and a series of bad events in action. What WAS democracy in action was the fact that more people voted in the recall election than in the 2000 presidential election. People were galvanized into action by this whole thing; they became personally involved. That had been sorely missing from local and national elections for sometime now. Overall though, my reaction to this election as a liberal is "meh." It could have been worse; we could have had that ghastly Bill Simon as Governor. Better to have a Republican who's a social Liberal and a fiscal Conservative - in fact, that's more likely to piss off the Conservatives. Arnie is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro domestic partnerships...the hallmarks of a fastidious liberal. How he plans to fix our current budget situation by repealing the car registration hike and without raising taxes ought to be interesting to see. In the meantime, I urge you to read this little commentary I found from a fellow Californian http://www.adamcadre.ac/calendar/10837.html

Paparazzi

camera.jpg My first "tool" for the trip arrived yesterday - a new digital camera. A Nikon Coolpix 4300 to be exact. It's sweet. 4 megapixels, nice big LCD, etc.I played around with it last night when I got it and it has some impressive features. I think coolest of which are the 12 scene modes; you select the appropriate "scene" e.g. portrait, night landscape, beach, fireworks display etc and the camera automatically sets everything up perfectly for the shot. I tested it last night and WOW. It's going to be great for Hong Kong where we'll encounter a lot of differences in lighting.It also has a 3x zoom lens on it, so it actually zooms instead of just enlarging the image. But one of the reasons why I chose this camera is the fact that you can use standard zoom lenses on it. So I can slap on a giganto-lens and get some great close ups. Should be good for the Safari Parks in South Africa. Though I will still be taking some lessons from Mike after seeing the unbelievable photos he snapped during his recent trip to Europe. I also had a pretty good experience buying it as well. I, believe it or not, am not the kind of person that jumps into buying something like that willy nilly. I research it until my eyes hurt from reading the interweb review sites. My primary source of tech reviews is cnet.com. Their reviews, coupled with the user opinions they have, can often make or break a deal for me. Their review of the 4300 was positive as were the user opinions. So now all I had to do was find a place to buy it. Cue resellerratings.com - if you EVER buy anything online, be it on ebay or direct from the site, run the vendor through resellerratings.com, I promise it will save you a lot of potential pain and suffering. Anyway, I eventually found a vendor that had the camera for a good price ($100 below retail) and they had a GREAT rating on resellerratings.com so I placed my order with eWiz. I ordered my camera on Friday afternoon; I didn't expect them to even look at the order until Monday. However when I realized that they were a fairly local company, I called them on Monday to see if I could pick up my camera to save the shipping cost. Granted it did take a while to get through, but when I asked if I could come pick up the camera they said "Uhhh sir, the camera is already at your house." And it was. The camera was on my doorstep by noon on Monday. Sweet. So I was pleased with that online buying experience. I think the camera will be very useful on our trip, so you may be overwhelmed by the number of pics I post!

Michael Palin, eat your heart out

It's official - I received our e-ticket receipt today for our plane tickets. It's quite a journey, let me tell ya!We leave SFO very late on Thursday 10/23 and fly to Hong Kong on Cathay. We arrive on Saturday 10/25 (damn International Dateline) at about 6:30am. Then we're in HKG for essentially 5 days; it's only three nights but like I said, we arrive really early in the morning and our flight to South Africa leaves at 11:45pm so that really gives us two full days extra. The flight to HKG is about 14 hours, depending on the season. I'm hoping it's not that long. I've done flights that have lasted 14 hours and they suck. Even if you sleep for 8 hours (which no one ever does) you still have 6 hours to go. But hey, at least we get good movies! Hollywood Homicide, Terminator 3, Possession, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Quiet American, plus whatever I have on the laptop. Hong Kong to Johannesburg is a flight I've never done before. The only flight I've done in that direction was Hong Kong to Colombo, Sri Lanka but that was via Bangkok. HKG to JNB is about 12 hours, a duration of flight I'm very used to; that's what we did about 8 times a year between Hong Kong and London when were at school. So I guess that shouldn't be too bad. On that leg we have some pretty good movies too; The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Charlie

VeggieTerror

Update: They got us too!Well kinda; we were all sitting at work when someone comes by and tells us to evacuate because there had been a bomb threat. So we all mill around and go outside and of the execs tells us that someone had phoned in a bomb threat and because of what happened at Shaklee, they were going to err on the side of caution. He also said the cops were coming and were going to sweep with dogs and that we should probably not go near our cars.......yeah. So anyway, we're like "whatever" and went on our merry ways. About an hour later I came back and.....wow. They had the whole area cordoned off, the FBI, ATF, local cops and the BOMB SQUAD were there. I was like "hmmm...ok." I went around the other side of the building to talk to some friends of mine and there was ambulances, fire trucks, K-9 units, unmarked cars, guys in suits with guns. It was chaos. We waited for about half an hour and nothing really happened. Then one of the guys walked over to the door and sat down on the curb out of view. There were some people standing around him and after about 5 minutes he stood up to reveal himself clad in a full bomb blast suit. There was a unanimous cry of "daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn." The guy waddled into the building and about 20 mins later came out with a package with they dumped into one of those bomb blast cylinders to test it ( I assume.) Turns out, while the dogs were in the building, about three of them zeroed on this package and that made the feds a little suspect, so they sent someone in to get it. After about an hour they must have decided that the package was OK because the bomb squad took off, then the amulance and fire truck, then most of the feds. I took after that because I was hungry and when I got back everything was gone and it was business as usual. I'm still not sure what they found and if it was dangerous but it certainly was an exciting morning! Ecoterrorists strike again... Deanne and I were on our way to work this morning and we were listening to our local news radio station when we heard "The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has joined Plesanton Police in the investigation of an explosion at the Shaklee Corporation headquarters early this morning." We both looked at each other because this piqued our interest on several levels. Firstly, and most importantly, our good friend's father works at Shaklee, so our immediate concern was for his safety. The "device" went off at 4am so I don't think anyone was there and the reports say there were no injuries and minor damage. Secondly, the Shaklee headquarters are about half a mile away from where I work. The local police were telling people at Shaklee and nearby Peoplesoft to not come into work today. So I thought "there's hope, it's small, but there's hope!" and I called into work to see if we had been shutdown too. But alas, it was not to be. So I figured I'd use my proximity to the incident to snap some driveby pics which you can see below. Basically they're blurry and crap but it shows that they've blocked the entire road and there's bomb squad units still on the scene. But who did this? Well it sounds VERY similar to a device that went off in front of the Chiron headquarters in Emeryville a few months ago; same timing device and everything. So everyone is concluding that it was hippy animal freaks. Now Shaklee doesn't test on animals, I know that. So I think the ecohippies got their wires crossed (no pun intended.) Anyway, thankfully no one was hurt and the damage was minor, but still, it shows that domestic terrorism can hit even in happy sunshine Pleasanton. Dsc01976.jpg
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Victory is mine!

I am triumphant once again!We have a weekly caption contest at work and for the longest time, I would win at least a couple times a month. But recently, I just couldn't produce the goods. However, today was different. I WON! Yeah, I was "inspired" by another "source" but who cares. Behold my winning entry in all it's glory! sumo.jpg "Oh my God, that guy's going to eat that little Japanese boy!" "That's crazy!....He's just going to be hungry again in an hour."

GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!

With the WUSA folding last week (more on that later) and sagging attendance figures at the MLS, it looked like Soccer's fragile foothold in the American sports market was beginning to ebb away.But wait, what's this? A report in USAToday saying that over 40% of American homes have a soccer ball lying around somewhere. Could there be hope for the beautiful game? Ok, Ok, I know that means that it was probably a discarded brithday present or a vain attempt to get Jimmy off "that damn interweb." But it still shows there's an investment in the game, and, more importantly, a grass roots movement in soccer that has sown it's seed in the most important market of them all; youth. The youth soccer movement in America really began to take hold during the late 70's and early 80's, possibly as a result of the moderate success of the NASL which featured the legendary figures of George Best, Pele, and Franz Beckenbauer. Kids began playing, and now every town has it's ubiquitous youth soccer club. Unfortunately the numbers drop off dramatically between the last few years of high school and college. There's too many distractions; other sports, cars, the opposite sex, part time jobs. But the important thing is, there's now a mechanism in place the seems to be consistently generating a handful of world class players. Players like Landon Donovan, Bobby Convey, Santino Quaranta, and Tim Howard all got their start playing their town's youth soccer leauge. In fact Landon continually attributes his success to his youth soccer coach. As politically driven as youth soccer has become (been there, done that) I think it might be the key to the future success fo U.S. soccer. With the great run in the 2002 World Cup behind us, there's alot of work to do, building the foundations for another great run in 2006. Now if we can just get those 41% of people to actually go to an MLS game....

Blogmaster

So I should have written about this a while ago but I've been swamped.I now host two new blogs on my site! I've been trying to convince Deanne that she should have a blog but she always said that she wouldn't have time to work on it. But a couple of weeks ago we bought her a laptop, so things have changed. So her blog is now up and running and she seems to be enjoying having a forum to express her odd but entertaining thoughts. Then Tricia (aka "Deanne's sexy friend from L.A." as my brother calls her) was having problems with her blog and asked me what software I used. At that point I figured it would be easier having hers on my server too, having figured out how easy it was to create multiple blogs using MoveableType. I spent a while teaching both of them how to change the templates and styles to their liking but they have really picked it up quickly. That's the great thing about MoveableType, it's easy enough for beginners but powerful enough for someone who wants to really customize it. So check out their respective efforts: Deanne: http://www.haebc.com/deanne Tricia: http://www.haebc.com/tricia

Art of the Saber

Stumbled upon this over at Slashdot. It's a Star Wars fan film that's actually very well done. Art of the Saber is 'a light saber fight sequence with the flavor of a Hong Kong martial arts action movie.' Well worth watching.I was impressed with the editing work and just the martial arts themselves. The films are pretty big (around 40MB) so beware. http://www.theforce.net/theater/fxprojects/aos2/index.shtml artofsaber.jpg

Would you like to help?

I'm thinking of writing a children's book called "Who stole the funk?"It's a story about a young parliamentarian called Furious Rodney McDangerous who can't find the funk. Here's an excerpt: "I could not find it in my trunk, I could not find it on a junk, I could not find it near a monk, I could not find it where a ship had sunk. Oh I wonder wonder wonder wonder Who on earth would steal the funk?"

That'll teach you to go to Disneyland.

It's official, somebody died at Disneyland."A locomotive broke loose from a train on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster Friday, killing a man and injuring 10 other riders, officials said." I fucking hate Disneyland and people have always said to me, no one's ever died at Disneyland etc, and I would always come up with technicalities about a plane crash in the parking lot and things like that but now I've got them. No technicalities, no nothing. He's dead, he died in the park, and that's that. Incidentally, I'd like to put an end, here and now, to all the rumors and urban legends saying that no one has ever died at Disneyland. EIGHT people have died at Disney Theme parks since 1955. August 1967: Ricky Lee Yama, a 17-year-old Hawthorne, CA, resident, was killed when he disregarded safety instructions and exited his People Mover car as the ride was passing through a tunnel. June 1973: Bogden Delaurot, an 18-year-old Brooklyn resident, drowned trying to swim across the Rivers of America. 7 June 1980: Gerardo Gonzales, a recent San Diego high school graduate, was killed on the People Mover in an accident much like the one that had befallen Ricky Lee Yama thirteen years earlier. 4 June 1983: Philip Straughan, an 18-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, resident, also drowned in the Rivers of America in yet another Grad Nite incident. 3 January 1984: Dolly Regene Young, a 48-year-old Fremont, CA, resident, was killed on the Matterhorn in an incident remarkably similar to the first Disneyland guest death nearly twenty years earlier. 24 December 1998: In a tragic Christmas Eve accident, one Disneyland cast member and two guests were injured (one fatally) when a rope used to secure the sailing ship Columbia as it docked on the Rivers of America tore loose the metal cleat to which it was attached. ...and now... 5 September 2003 - Guy dies when Thunder Mountain derails in tunnel. Don't get me wrong, I think it's terrible that the poor guy died. I feel sad for his family and friends. But, in a morbid way, I'd like to thank him for proving my point. Oh yeah, and to anyone who says "But Alex, no one is ever pronounced dead at Disneyland...." Wrong again, bucko. There have been three incidents where people have been pronounced dead at Disneyland. It's not the happiest place on earth when you die there.

The whole (vending machine) world sucks

A conversation that took place between myself and our nearest vending machine (some creative license taken......obviously):Me (to myself): Let's see here, a nice frosty Diet Coke will help me through this mind numbing afternoon. Vending Machine: Hehe sucka. Me: What? Vending Machine: Nothing. Me: Huh...oh well. Ok let's see here (shuffles in pocket) hey a pocket full of silvers, alright! I put sixty cents into the vending machine and press the Diet Coke button Vending Machine: (grind grind click) That'll be sixty cents please. Me: But I put it sixty cents. Vending Machine: No you didn't. Me: Yes I did. Vending Machine: No, seriously you didn't. See, look... (grind kachunk) A old nasty penny falls into the change slot Vending Machine: You put a penny in, not a dime. Me: Dude, I didn't even have a penny in my pocket, let alone one that looked like that! Vending Machine: Yes you did. Me: No I didn't! (slap) Vending Machine: Hey! Me: Give me my goddamn soda! Vending Machine: No Me: Why the hell not!? Vending Machine: Cos....you hit me... (pause) Vending Machine:...and you didn't give me enough money. Me: Oh that's it (KICK!) Vending Machine: HEY! Y'know what? Fine. You've ruined it for everyone. Me: What? Vending Machine: Me: (Walking Away) You bastard. Vending Machine: sucka.

My pseudo neighbors

"GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you."I thought this was kinda neat. It's a geographical database of urls. Sounds odd, I know but basically what you do is find out the longitude and latitude of your site (i.e. your primary location, not the physical location of the server.) Then you add some custom meta tags to your site and then add yourself to their massive database. Once the database has been updated you can view all the sites that are in your area. A really neat idea. So now you can find the closest people to me! Interesting internet history side note: The URL location is also called a "GeoURL ICBM Address" because in the days of yore, the same name was given to the "form used to register a site with the Usenet mapping project, back before the day of pervasive Internet, included a blank for longitude and latitude, preferably to seconds-of-arc accuracy. This was actually used for generating geographically-correct maps of Usenet links on a plotter; however, it became traditional to refer to this as one's ICBM address or missile address, and some people include it in their sig block with that name. (A real missile address would include target elevation.)"

A week on the wildside

What a week! Why is it that the week Deanne is out of town, the shit hits the fan? Work was just stupidly hectic. (tangent here for a second) Y'know I used to have a sticker that said "My co-workers are idiots." I should really dig that up and display it prominently in my cube and when anyone says "I'm offended by that," I will simply retort with "Oh yeah? Prove you're NOT an idiot." That oughta confuse most of them. Idiots.Anyway, so yeah, Deanne is out of town all week and work was so busy that, ordinarily, I wouldn't have left the office until at least 9pm every night. But I had to leave at 5pm because Will is working in Hayward and I had to pick him up. I felt terrible because I was late every single night to pick him up. Then it was my nieces birthday on Wednesday so I had to pick up a gift, get it wrapped, go to Hayward to get Will, go to my in-laws in time for dinner and then spend most of the night on my cellphone putting out fires at work. The prize winning event happened yesterday when Will and I spent over four hours at the hospital. Yeah. Long story. On Wednesday Will was complaining that his foot hurt, and being the caring big brother I am, I told him to suck it up and take some advil. So yesterday he calls me a little after lunch telling me he can't walk and he's in absolute agony. Uh oh. So I call Mindy (her mom works at the nearby hospital) for advice on whether or not to go to the Emergency Room. After some consideration I decided it was best to go pick him up and take him to the hospital in Pleasanton. Now for the record, I HATE hospitals. I don't know why, they just freak me out. So imagine my delight when the ER registrar tells us that they've just had four ambulances arrive within the last 10 minutes, and things are a little "hectic back there." Fantastic. So we get Will looked, meanwhile three more ambulances come in and wheel sick and dying people past us, as well as a lifeline helicopter arrival. For those of you who don't know, they don't use the lifeline for just anybody...you have to be in such bad shape that a regular ambulance a) can't get to where you are or b) won't get you to hospital in time. Yeahhhhh. So when the orderlies walked past us with blood soaked towels, I decided it was time for me to "go make some phone calls." The most interesting of the arrivals was an elderly lady who was brought in on a guerney complaining about nazis. Will's guerney was out in the corridor by the storage cabinets and one of the nurses came over and hooked a bottle into and IV. He smiled and said "This right here would knock you AND me AND him (pointing to Will) out cold....it's 250cc of Morphine." I was like "DAAAAMN!" He laughed and then kinda stood there and said "She's dying," and walked away. That was like being hit in the face with a 2x4. I didn't even know the lady but man I felt bad. ANYWAY, Will got x-rayed and poked and prodded etc, and was eventually diagnosed with a sprain of the tendon that goes across the top of the foot. Rest, anti-inflammatories and common sense was the prescription. Incidentally the ER staff got a real kick out of Will's answer to "Do you live around here?" Actually it was kinda funny, the lady who registered him said "Ok, so are you still living at 113 Turquoise Way?" We left that address in 1987 :) So Deanne gets back tomorrow, thank God. I've missed her alot, despite seeing her (kinda) last night in San Francisco (long story, not even going there.) The hectic pace will doubtless carry on into the weekend. Joy unbounded.

Sunburn Country

Ow..ow...OWWW. That is the sound of trying to put shoes on when you have sunburned feet. Usually I'm really good about putting on the ol' sunblock. I normally completely douse myself in SPF 400,000 but yesterday at Turlock Lake, I only doused the obvious areas, like face, back and neck. Now I have red knees and red feet. Pain. But it was worth it. We had a good day out on the boat with my in-laws. Will managed to get up on the skis for the first time and Deanne and Don gave a great demonstration on how it should be done. Me? Well I thrashed around on the tube and took about 100 photos. I gave skiing a whirl but failed to get up this time around. I think it was my shorts which, when I began accelerating, inflated to form a highly effective drag chute, increasing my drag coefficient by several thousand times. Anyway, I put all the photos up in the gallery. There's alot of them (almost 100) as well as a video of Will wiping out on the tube.