December 2000 Archives

Our group headed out dancing in WeHo. It was a good night all around. People were in a good mood, and we kept running into people from the "Christmas in the Ghetto" party a few weeks back. Did I not mention that party? It was at Cory and Peter's and featured many ghetto decorations. For example: an artificial tree with rolled up plastic grocery store bags and strategically placed Budweiser cans. Another fine Martha Stewart-on-crack decoration was the string of Coke, Diet Coke, and Mountain Dew cans around the place. It was a great party with lots of good memories and so seeing the same people at the club last night really made the evening. If you were there, I was the dork in the orange t-shirt - not the smelly guy yelling "Yeeeeaaaahhhhhh" every few minutes.


This weekend for the new millennium celebration, it's off to Santa Barbara - or as some geographers like to call it: "The Riviera of California". I certainly hope they are referring to the French version and not the General Motors version. We plan to call the sordid affair "Chaos' New Year's Rockin' Eve" (How's that for apostrophe heaven?). I'll give a full recap upon my return next year.


I guess I better go around the site and change the copyrights! Have a great New Year's everyone. If the last few months are any indication, it should be a great year. Chaos does pass on this tidbit. Seems that the last several years, whatever she happened to do or the people she happened to be hanging out with seem to have a large impact on the rest of the year. Keep this in mind if it's 12 midnight and someone is giving you the eye.

Jarre is giving a concert in Okinawa, Japan on New Year's Day and it will be web broadcast. Last year, the Twelve Dreams of the Sun concert was web broadcast from the Giza Pyramids of Egypt and it was a success - even at 56k. Now that I have DSL at home, I hope to be able to enjoy the whole thing sans glitches. Of course, I am still looking for a videocassette of the show from last year. For the latest news on the show visit http://www.jarre.net.


A great way to find rare Jarre items is by subscribing to the clic.net mailing list for Jarre. I can't tell you how many things that I have been able to find on the net or people I have contacted to trade things. As a result, Jarrepalooza has grown and grown.

This time, we rented a 2001 Nissan Altima GXE Limited Edition from Budget. The car had some good power and comfy seats, but the interior was a bit unrefined. It had many of the same elements that the interior of my Xterra has, but with a worse air-conditioner control unit.


Some of the highlights of the annual gift exchange: a Clapper, some clothes from Gap, a globe that says "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" in 32 different languages, and the biggest surprise of them all: my mom wrapped up an old Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll that I had when I was a kid. I thought that I had thrown it away or that I gave it to Goodwill, but Mom said it was in some random box in the garage. Time has not been kind to Charlie. The heat in the garage has misshapen his head a bit so the mouth stays open but is hard to close. It is like a Twilight Zone episode - the one where you try and get rid of a maniacal puppet and it keeps coming back. Altogether now: "I'm Talky Tina, and I'm going to KILL you!!"

Silophone is back!

Silophone is back!

Silophone is back!


Be sure to have your Real Player installed.


A description of what I believe is the ultimate time waster from the Silophone website:


Silophone is a project by [The User] which combines sound, architecture, and communication technologies to transform a significant landmark in the industrial cityscape of Montreal.


Located in Montreal�s old port, Silo #5B-1 was built in 1958 and has been cited by Le Corbusier as a masterpiece of modern architecture. The elevator was used to store grain which came to Montreal by rail and departed by sea. Due to changes in the global grain market the elevator became obsolete and was closed in 1996. Since then it has remained empty and, for reasons of security, closed to the public. The structure, constructed entirely of reinforced concrete, is 200 metres long, 16 metres wide and approximately 45 metres at its highest point. The main section of the building is formed of approximately 115 vertical chambers, all 30 metres high and up to 8 metres in diameter. These tall parallel cylinders, whose form evokes the structure of an enormous organ, have exceptional acoustic properties: a stunning reverberation time of over 20 seconds. Anything played inside the Silo is euphonized, made beautiful, by the acoustics of the structure. All those who have entered have found it an overwhelming and unforgettable experience.


Silophone makes use of the incredible acoustics of Silo #5 by introducing sounds, collected from around the world using various communication technologies, into a physical space to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art. Sounds arrive inside Silo #5 by telephone or internet. They are then broadcast into the vast concrete grain storage chambers inside the Silo. They are transformed, reverberated, and coloured by the remarkable acoustics of the structure, yielding a stunningly beautiful echo. This sound is captured by microphones and rebroadcast back to its sender, to other listeners and to a sound installation outside the building. Anyone may contribute material of their own, filling the instrument with increasingly varied sounds.

Have a great Holiday weekend. Be sure to enjoy the solar eclipse on Christmas Day (North America only).

The absolute worst place to impulse buy is Costco. You can easily ring up $200 in items before you know what hit you. As much as I enjoy shopping at Costco, I can never get food items there. By the time I get near the end of say, a box of cookies, I have no desire to eat cookies for months. DVD's and Video Tapes are another story entirely.


If you are scrambling around at the last minute online for shopping, I suggest you take a look at HappyCoupons.com. They are one of the sites that feature discount codes for all sorts of merchandise. If you are shopping for DVD's, I recommend DVD Price Search. On the site you can compare prices of DVDs on various e-commerce sites as well as get some coupon codes.

Five days before Christmas, I have officially begun my shopping. For those of you who have someone on your list who doesn't need anything or hasn't decided what they want, may I suggest a donation in their name to the National Childhood Cancer Fund. I like donating to them because they have one of the highest ratios of how much they get in donations to the amount going to research (somewhere around 95%). That means only 5% of donations goes to cover administration costs. They also have holiday cards that are made by cancer survivors. Nothing like giving warm fuzzies for the holidays.


Last night, as I was making the rounds of the stores, I noticed how bad the selection of cards at Hallmark is. Not only that, but the number of cards that say 'Holiday' or 'Season's Greetings' vs. 'Christmas' or 'Hanukkah' was disproportionately low. And what's up with the huge line at Fry's? It's a great place to shop unless you need customer service or actually want to buy something.

Back in the saddle again. Days off are always nice. But why is it that major things seem to take place at work while I am gone?? I think it is another one of those perception thingies.


My extended weekend was fun, thank you. It was good to see friends that I don't get to see on a regular basis. It was also amazing to see my friend Joe's kid Zack. Joe is the same age as me and has a kid. It is still hard to believe. However, it will be cool in another 5 years when we can invite him to Anti-Valentine's Day and other parties.


Thanks to Peg, Robert, Reed, Jonathan, Matt, Steve, Joe, Jody, Zack, Doris, and Bill for a great weekend. No thanks to Avis though. My nice Olds Alero had too much road noise and the "Check Tire Pressure" light/alarm scared the bejabbers out of me. (It was actually handy since one of the tires was at 20PSI)


Late note: Somehow this got posted with the wrong date originally. I have since fixed it.


Oh yes, and Happy Birthday Joe!

The Club Josh Guestbook finally works. This has been a major pain since I have had my website. It seems that for no reason whatsoever (or as in the last case, the upgrade of software/hardware) my guestbook gets lost. It has been quite some time since it has worked, and hopefully people will start signing it again.


Last night, I was the recipient of a Sony 8MM camcorder courtesy of my work. This camera features the ultra-cool night vision feature that allows filming at night with no light. It is definitely one of the coolest things I have ever won. My next step is to get a world premiere video on a cool site like IFILM or something. Perhaps even Real Video for the site.

On October 1, a group of my friends and I headed for a day out at Six Flags Magic Mountain (read my epinion). Despite the fact that I had discount tickets, it turned out to be an expensive day. In the process of enjoying many fine roller coasters, I managed to lose my prescription glasses and soak my phone. My glasses were new ones I had just purchased from LensCrafters as replacements for the ones I lost in Florida a few weeks prior. Total cost of trip: Over $400. I had no thoughts about ever seeing my glasses. I imagined 3 part time workers trying to match lost item reports with boxes of items collected sporadically from under roller coasters. Well, after two months, my glasses came intact with the case in the mail. No note, just a copy of the lost report. Moral of the story: no matter how hopeless it seem, always fill out a lost item report at a theme park.

I found an old pic of me with my car from 1989 that used to be on the now-defunct Friends and Family page (removed basically due to the lack of updates and traffic). Today, I looked up the invoice price for my car and it was $9588. I did not get the car as new; it was a year old and a former rental car for Hertz. I remember when we went to get the car. It was 10 days before my 16th birthday and my step-dad was working for a car lot. They had just gotten in a few Corolla FX's. Two of them were the regular FX (blue and grey) and there was a red FX-16. I decided I liked the grey one better, and we raided the others for the tool kit and the back concealer (a flip up cover for the back compartment area.


I am not sure when it happened, but eventually we figured out that the car had been rear-ended. There was a ton of glass bits in the well where the spare tire was. Also, the back window leaked like crazy. My car always had a musty odor to it, no matter how many air fresheners I put into it. The front window also had a leak that had to be fixed. The back hatch paint was not exactly the same color as the rest of the car (no doubt due to the low-bid approach of Hertz to fix the car). I was happy with the car for the time I had it. The major headache was always the brakes. It seemed like we were always doing something with them. Joe Holmberg and I attempted to change the brake pads on the car one day in Davis. Little did we know that there was already something wrong with them. A caliper had fallen off of the left front brake and completely messed up the brakes. The car vibrated like crazy when I stopped. After a few months, we took it to a shop and discovered how bad things were. My mom then forbade me to work on the car myself.


The other big problem was a leak in some hose that basically squirted oil around my engine. It was amazing how far that car drove with essentially little amounts of oil. My dad first noticed the problem when I first drove down to visit. He had two major statements on the car: "There is no oil in this thing" and "I can pee more that that radiator can hold". Dad was always one for good comments. Despite all of that, the car faithfully served me, never leaving me on the side of a road. We were able to navigate the Cuesta Grade near San Luis Obispo in a driving rainstorm and many bridges in high winds.


From 1988 to 1995, the Trekmobile (as my mom referred to it) shared many momentous occasions in my life including getting my license, being crammed full of people to see Fantasia in 1990, commuting home from college, first love and heartbreak, going on many a geography fieldtrip, graduating from college, and moving countless times. I had no intention of getting a new car until sometime around late 1995. I had been working full time at my UCD job for a few months, and awash with cash I began to look into the possibilities of getting a new car. I had some money from my grandfather's estate in the bank after his passing, but was taking my time doing research on places like Edmunds.com. Sometime in the summer, my car was broken into in the parking lot of my apartment complex. I remember being woken up by the neighbor who drove a similar car. She said that when she pulled up, she noticed my doors open and the window smashed. It seems someone caught them in the middle of the break in. They tried to take the radio (an old cassette radio) and did a good job of throwing everything around in the car. Fortunately, nothing was taken. However, the Trekmobile never "felt" the same. I no longer felt comfortable in the car. Someone had broken the trust and the bond with my car. So I started looking more and more and eventually decided to buy a Honda Accord. I lucked out and found a great deal on one and at the same time found someone who was willing to buy my car for around $2000. So in January of 1996, I sold the Toyota and bought Jeffrey.


So I guess I will always wonder what happened to the car that made the owners junk it last year. It was junked in a town near Monterey and I wonder if it is sitting in a junkyard facing the ocean, reminiscing about its owners. Thinking about the good times like taking me to school that first day I could drive by myself and leaving the ground on Highway 120 near Mono Lake. Like going to that first Star Trek convention. Like sitting in the parking lot during the 1989 earthquake (look, I'm a geographer I'm sure he enjoyed it as much as me). I would love to get my old license plate to hang on my wall at work along with plates from my other cars. A fitting tribute to a big part of 7+ years of my life. We'll always think of you and miss you. Thanks for all the memories.


I guess I'm not quite over it yet.

It really started with Thursday night's Ab Fab-athon with Cory and Peter. Besides work on Friday, it pretty much continued through Sunday night. Friday night the gang headed out to UltraSuede. I must admit it was a bit odd dancing to such classics as "You Spin Me 'Round (Like a Record)", "The Jefferson's Theme", and "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go". It's been awhile since I had been out doing any sort of dancing and it was good to be out in the real world. A note about the ever-classic "You Spin Me": when I was a young impressionable youth (circa 1985), my brother's friend Mark Woodsmall told me that I would grow up and look exactly like the lead singer. So far, the prophecy has not come true, but I still worry about it.


Saturday's entertainment was limited to late Saturday night at Cory's friend Fred's house (I am not sure if that is grammatically correct). The party was for Fred's roommate and I found myself watching Nightmare on Elm Street and parts of The Mummy with the sound off. It was particularly funny to watch the subtitles on the Mummy. It made me realize just how bad the dialogue really is in that movie. Overall it was a fun party.


Sunday was another low-key day, but Roger and I ended up at Disneyland. They are almost ready to open the doors to the new resort. They have pushed back the walls to near the huge "California" letters outside the entrance. It's the first time I have been in that position since the parking lot was open. I must admit, it will be odd in the new park. No matter where I go, I will be thinking of what section of the old parking lot it is. For example - "Let's go ride the roller coaster out in Winnie the Pooh". Of course you can do that with Disneyland - "Let's go ride Indiana Jones out in Donald".


Last but not least, I found out from Carfax (via Brother-Unit) that my first car, the Trekmobile, the 1987 Toyota Corolla, was junked on 11-29-99. I am a bit depressed for some strange reason. Oh well, I'll get over it as I drive home in my Xterra.

Yesterday was a busy one and thus no update. I spent a good chunk of the day admiring some cars (and even riding in two) at Willow Springs Raceway. One of the highlights was a pair of Ferrari 360 Modena's racing around the large track.


I guess I spoke too soon. Apparently, Southern California is also feeling the pinch of the Electricity Grinch. I think this is the biggest BS that has ever come out of the power consortium. I say we all get generators and put them out of business. How could the governing body have let so many Power plants go down for maintenance at the same time? Someone needs to lose his or her job over this. At least I live in an area served by the much-maligned LA Department of Water and Power. They are not tied into the system that is having all the problems.


Europe 1996 is now available via PDA and Mobile. The PDA site is now about 400k. I think I am going to redo the PDA link and give users the option select which sections they want on their PDA.

Despite all the bad things like traffic, there are still good reasons to live in LA. For example: Having enough electricity to run Christmas lights, unlike those poor people in Northern California. How is it possible that in the year 2000, we are running out of electricity? I think it is all a load of crap. They just don't want to admit to inadequate planning.


The brother-unit sends along this e-mail about the wonderful uses of Coca Cola:


1. In many states, the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the
car to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.



2. You can put a t-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will totally
dissolve the steak in two days.



3. To clean a toilet, pour a can of Coke into the toilet and let the "real
thing" sit for one hour, then flush clean.



4. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china.



5. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers, rub the bumper with a
crumpled-up piece of aluminum foil dipped in Coke.



6. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals, pour a can of Coke over
the terminals to bubble away the corrosion.



7. To loosen a rusted bolt, apply a cloth soaked in Coke to the rusted
bolt for several minutes.



8. To bake a moist ham, empty a can of Coke into the baking pan, then wrap
the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is
finished, remove the foil, allowing the
drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy.



9. To remove grease from clothes, empty a can of coke into a load of
greasy clothes, add detergent, and run through a regular cycle. The Coke
will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your
windshield.

Apparently, I forgot that before you bring a tree inside the house, you should let it soak in a bucket of water. Something about letting it get as much water as it can initially. Or something. Today my Xterra is 6 months old and is coincidentally in the shop for its 7500 mile service. Me thinks I am going to be over my mileage allotment come 2003. Oh well.


Today is also Gary's Birthday. Despite what his co-workers might think, he is not 40.

Feeling much better, thank you. Although I am not in the mood for McDonald's McChicken Heads. It amazes me how far this story has spread. So I'm doing my part to spread it even more.


In the front room of my apartment sits Roger's 8-foot Christmas tree (pics soon). One of the dangers of bringing freshly cut plants or trees into the house is the off chance that a bug of unidentifiable origins should fly out and attack you. Last night was comical chaos at its best as Roger, the vacuum, and I eventually beat the bug. (It was HUGE, I swear.) next time I will listen to my mother when she says "Hose the tree down and leave the tree outside overnight before bringing it inside". Sound advice..

Roger sick+no sleep+party with friends=cold. Enjoy your weekend; I will be nursing some hot chocolate with DayQuil and then will go and enjoy some fine and dandy Pismo Beach Fish and Chips. Then sleep and hopefully ready to go next week.