March 2001 Archives

Daylight Savings Time begins this weekend. Is it just me, or is this one legacy item that we have no use for anymore? I can understand its use in the last century, but I think in this day and age that we should kiss it goodbye.


Dack mentioned that he has a wireless web setup in his house for less that $500 bucks. Hmmmm. Sounds like a good solution to the space issue I'm having in the office. In a related note, I called Earthlink regarding our long-lost DSL service. They told me that they hadn't re-submitted the order to Pac Bell yet. Joy. They told me to call back on Tuesday and they would (hopefully) have a date for the re-install. Let me put it to you this way: I am not holding my breath.


I now have on my list of items to buy:

Wireless Web

Computer (to replace the almost 4 year old one)

VCR - I'd like to get a TiVo or something, but I still need to tape the occasional program and rent movies

Hawaiian vacation


Hmm. I might need to save a bit more...

A look into the spread of Foot-and-Mouth disease. The CDC has some interesting insights. Sorta.


Oszie passes along this guide to dancing that apparently is very popular on the web.


And finally Survivorsucks.com has a link to: Survivior Monster Island! I'm betting on Godzilla to forge a strong alliance.

Mamma Mia was a great show. If you love ABBA's music or have even heard of their songs, you will like the show. It was paced well and the cast gives a great performance for the entire show. The second act was the weakest of the two, but ends with a great curtain call of three ABBA songs performed like a concert. It's gonna be in LA for a few more weeks, then off to Chicago before going to Broadway. Be sure to see it!


Walking away from the show grinning ear to ear, I wondered if it was possible to interrupt my Daily Update with an ABBA song. In the play, people would be having a conversation, and whammo, there is a bridge right into a song. It seemed like a good idea to liven up the ol' update.


I still think that the Amazon Honor System has potential. Just think of all the things I could do around here with some money.


<queue music>
I work all night, I work all day
To pay the bills I have to pay
Ain't it sad
And still there never seems to be
A single penny left for me
That's too bad
In my dreams I have a plan
If I got me a wealthy man
I wouldn't have to work at all
I'd fool around and have a ball

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha, aha
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It's a rich man's world
It's a rich man's world

A man like that is hard to find
But I can't get him off my mind
Ain't it sad
And if he happens to be free
I bet he wouldn't fancy me
That's too bad
So I must leave, I'll have to go
To Las Vegas or Monaco
And win a fortune in a game
My life will never be the same

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha, aha
All the things I could do
If I had a little money
It's a rich man's world

Money, money, money
Must be funny
In the rich man's world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man's world
Aha, aha
All the things I could do
If I had a little money

It's a rich man's world
It's a rich man's world

<end music>

On the other hand I doubt I'd ever get enough to quit the day job.

Tonight Roger and I are off to the musical spectacular "Mamma Mia" written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus - the two guys from ABBA. The musical is chock-full of ABBA hits and should be entertaining. Alex told me that the musical has about two lines of dialog between songs. We'll see if hes exaggerating or whatnot.


Cruising through the Club Josh site today, I still realize there is so many things I have yet to do. For example, I want to create PDA links for each individual section of the site. It's not that big of a deal, but its one of those things that keeps falling through the cracks. Once that is done, I can submit some of the channels to AvantGo.


Other things that I want to do include taking more photos of California Adventure and even maybe adding photos of Disneyland. Of course before I even do that, i should add some photos to the web versions of the Trip Diaries. Don't even get me started on my City Musings project. Ugh. the more I think about it the more there is to do. I guess I'll just slowly keep at it.

My trusty JVC VCR from 1992 has gone on the fritz again, and instead of repairing it, I think it is time to invest in a new one. Most SVHS VCR's can be bought for less than 300 bucks. A big change since 1992 when my regular low-level 4-Head HiFi VCR cost around 400. I figure this will be the last VCR I buy since in 8 years I expect DVD's to be recordable and the systems to record stuff from your TV or TiVo to them will cost around the same.


I have noticed a lack of comparison shopping for VCR's on the web. It could be that everyone is shopping for DVD players and such and that people who want a VCR are the people who wouldn't buy it online.


Note to electronics makers: How about a tool where you type in the Model number of an old VCR and get the current model equivalent. You can even throw in links to the next level up with some text like "Upgrade your picture for only $50 more!!" Just a friendly suggestion.

I really thought Kate Hudson would win, and I really should have picked Russell Crowe. Oh well, my picks came out 15/23 right or 65%. Good enough to earn a tie for third place in the office pool.


I thought this year's ceremony was good. It clipped along and clocked in at almost exactly 3:30. I do think they need to ditch the "Countdown to Oscars" preshow bit which has just gone from bad to downright awful. The musical performances were not that bad, and Steve Martin did a pretty good job as host. Some of his jokes fell flat, but as the evening went on, he seemed to get better and better. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who caught Danny DeVito chomping on a carrot stick.


One of these years, I'd like to actually go sit in the stands of the awards. Next year, the ceremony moves to the new Kodak Theater on Hollywood Blvd. - right next door to the Mann's Chinese Theater. I wouldn't want to camp out in that neighborhood, so maybe if I just show up early. I wasn't into the hype this year as much as I have been in year's past - and I think some of that might be due to work and the opening of DCA. Well, that's enough for this special Sunday update. Off to bed.

I guess no free tacos. Mir came down last night with nary a hitch. Good light show, but no drama. I guess it is a good thing.


Oscar Picks 2001:

A note before I begin. I am only posting for the top 9 categories since my knowledge and experience with the other categories rates next to nil. I did however make picks for them, and I will include them in the final tally after the awards on Monday.

Best Picture: momentum has swung back and forth, but I think Gladiator still has enough to eek it out on Sunday.


Best Director: Ang Lee will ride to victory, mainly due to the Soderbergh split. Ridly Scott could win if it's a Gladiator night.


Best Actor: This is the toughest battle of the night. Russell Crowe is the early favorite, but I think deep down that Tom Hanks will be the first person to take home three best actor trophies.


Best Actress: No contest this year: Julia Roberts smiles all the way home.


Best Supporting Actor: Benicio Del Toro has the only performance that was really deserving of an award. Joaquin? Don't think so.


Best Supporting Actress: Kate Hudson is the IT girl and should have something to compare with here Mom.


Best Foreign Language Film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will win this by a landslide, and because of this won't win Best Picture.


Best Adapted Screenplay: Shut out of most other awards, Traffic will finally get one.


Best Original Screenplay: Not really nominated for much else (other than Kate Hudson), Almost Famous should get this.


Before I forget, I remembered that there are some Gorn pictures from Catalina that I missed! I'll try and get those up on Monday or so next week.

Happy 70th Birthday William Shatner. He has probably one of the best tounge-in-cheek websites for any celebrity.

It appears that NIMA (National Imagery and Mapping Agency) has found traces of the long lost Mars Polar Lander. How would you like the job of trying to persuade people that three pixels is a lost spacecraft? I wouldn't mind working in remote sensing or cartography again, but I am not sure I want to sign up for the needle in a haystack department.


It's Oscar time again. This sunday is the awards ceremony, and once again, my invitation has gone missing. A few years back, I used to publish an e-mail to a select group with my picks for the awards. Friday I will post on the site my picks for the winners and when Monday rolls around we can see how I did.

So today is the vernal equinox. Despite what some people claim, today is not the only day to balance an egg.



In other news - did you know that there is a FAA-certified space launching facility on Kodiak Island in Alaska? Neitehr did I. Actually, I didn't know we had one in Virginia, either. Where was I? Did I miss a bunch of press releases or something?


I don't know about you, but I am not going to stand in a line of 250 million people to get a free taco.

Man what a weekend!!


Saturday was spent hanging with the family and helping Roger with his HTML class. Ok I was more of moral support as I slept and he worked, but you get the picture. Sunday. Now Sunday was a different story.


Sunday I scanned 71 pictures for the website. I started scanning just Gorn pictures and ended up with 51 of them - mostly of North America, but I also added some European ones from 1996. While going through the albums, I decided to add some more pictures of Charo in Concert from 1998. It was just a few more, so I added some pictures of Formal 23, Random 25, and Yellow 26 to the Party Pics section. In total, I spent over 4 hours on the computer scanning. I ended up breaking out the North American Gorn photos by year - similar to how it is done for the Europe pictures. I might play with it a bit more, but it depends on how motivated I get. I think I need a break.


When Roger was done with his class, he decided to have some fun. So we headed out to Disneyland. While checking the wait at the Napoli restaurant in Downtown Disney, we saw Danny Bonaduce who was there with his daughter. Right then I realized I needed to carry some more Gorns with me. Inside Disneyland, we were happy to discover that they were already selling the two park passports. We ponied up the money and walked across the esplanade into California Adventure. All was right in the world again.


Ok, off to bed. Enjoy the pics! Here is an easy list of the new galleries:

Gorn North America Pics

Gorn Europe 1996 Pics

Charo in Concert 1998

Formal 23

Random 25

Yellow 26

Yesterday I went to Spring Internet World 2001. It certainly was a let down from last year. At this time last year, the stock market was at an all-time high and dot coms were springing up all over the place. I seem to remember that one of the coolest things last year were all the new websites claiming to do everything from traditional e-commerce to paying your bills. Now a year later, most of them are gone. The emphasis this year was on B2B tools like ad revenue, tracking customers, content management, and server space. Not very exciting at all. This year's T-shirt count also suffered. I only snagged 3 shirts compared to last year's record 8.


And the moment you have all been waiting for.......


Disneyland Annual Passport Sales Will Resume March 21st. Ok, maybe it was only me waiting for it.

I have completed a first crack at a newly redesigned Gorn page. I am not 100% satisfied with it, and will probably tweak it a bit more in the coming days. If (and that's a big if folks) it goes up, it would be the first significant upgrade to the Gorn page since 1998.


Amazon has a new honor system where people can donate money to their favorite website. Somehow, I doubt Club Josh would earn enough for me to quit my day job.


Still no DSL. Last night, I sent a large-ish photo (approx. 300k) to work and it took forever. I hate being in the stone age. I feel like those monkeys on the Pac Bell DSL commercial.


Those folks at Jack In The Box are at it again. Jack has bought a new football team called the Carnivores and has set up a web site. The best part? The Meaty Cheesy Boys are going to perform at the halftime show. Look carefully at the roster of players. You will notice some great names and even the name of the technical contact on the whois record.

I finally created the Europe 1999 Gallery for the Gorn page. It's one of those things I have been meaning to do, but have never did. I truly want to go back and improve some photos on the site. For example, photos from Sweden are much smaller than the ones for Walt Disney World. The Sweden pictures were my first photo gallery using Photoshop and they need some updating. I also really really really want to scan some older Gorn photos to clean them up. Also, there are so many photos of the Gorn that are not on the site that it is a real shame. Some evening or weekend I'll just hunker through them all.


The winds of change are blowing down in Anaheim. Could it be that Annual Passports are coming again soon??? Only time will tell.

So Saturday Roger notices that our lovely Earthlink DSL isn't working. We have had spotty problems since it was first installed last October, but overall have been satisfied with the service. After a full day of no DSL, I finally called tech support around 1am Sunday. The helpful technician instructed me to uninstall all my communications software and then re-install it. Still no luck. Finally he opened a tag and said a rep would contact me, and hopefully it would resolve itself over the weekend. Sunday morning at 10am, an Earthlink tech person called and said that Pac Bell has given me the boot. Apparently, they received a disconnect order from Earthlink and shut me off the service. The guy told me to call first thing Monday morning so they could get on the phone with Pac Bell at the same time. (I guess this means that no one at Pac Bell is working other than the gleeful technicians Larry, Curly, and Moe who are unplugging helpless consumers.) So this morning bright and early, I call Earthlink. I wait on hold for total of 1 and a half hours and speak to several different people. Finally, Jannette tells me that she is getting the runaround from Pac Bell as well and will call me back later. So finally I get the call back. Pac Bell has completely disconnected me from DSL. Which of course means I need to go back to the beginning of the queue line to get DSL back. The short of it? I am sans DSL for up to a month and a half. For my trouble I get a free dial up account (don't I have this already?) and two free months of DSL when it gets connected again. Roger thinks I should have pressed for more and he's probably right. But after a total of three and a half hours on the phone for the last few days, I didn't have any fight left. I'll keep you updated as the chapters unfold.


Last night, it finally occurred to me what in tarnation I was doing for New Years 1995-1996. I was at Universal CityWalk with Nick watching Casey Kasem count down to midnight. Oh yes, and we spent a lovely hour trying to get out of the poorly designed parking garages.


Also last night I was thinking of a new design for the Gorn pages. If I ever get the free time I want to scan all of the old Gorn photos that never made it as well as clean up some of the older ones on the site. It's an interesting idea and since I have no DSL at home, I might have the time to do it (just no way to upload the photos in a reasonable time). I also have some Disneyland Paris photos I never scanned that I'd like to post as well. time to dust off and fire up the scanner.


Oh yes, and finally (are you still there?) Epinions finally deleted my account. I lost 3 bucks of E-royalties by canceling it, but considering no one could access any of my reviews anymore in the travel section I don't think I would ever reach the $10 minimum to cash out.

Thank goodness the end of the week is here. I don't know about you, but things have been muy crazy around here. I have been putting in extra long hours at work, and then right when I fall asleep it feels like I have to start all over again. As much as I like sleeping in on the weekends, there are some projects around the house that need to get done. Like getting fish food. Like getting people food. Like organizing the closet of boxes. Like washing the car. Like getting the oil changed. Everything just keeps getting pushed off later and later. One day I'll catch up. Really. Honest.


Today is Sarah's birthday. My god, she is 22!

Sunday is Kris' birthday.

Everyone's favorite crack site, AmIHotorNot.com has added a new feature. Now you can meet selected people. After you vote on someone, their picture shows up on the next person's page. In the same box, there is a link to "Click here to meet this person". this takes you to the "Meet me at Am I hot or Not" section of the site. If both parties click "Yes", then information is sent to both people. I think it an excellent extension of the site. I wonder if Are they hot or not is going to do an alternative interface for that section as well.


El Pollo Loco would do well to not only care Foster Freeze ice cream, but also their food.

But I did enjoy a nice meal out with Cory at Miceli's. No Garrett Wang though.

I finally got around to reading a magazine that Haim left on my desk. It's called Web Techniques and it has some interesting articles in it. The January 2001 issue that was on my desk had an interesting article on the building of your web team that is right on target.


In a related note, some recruiter called me and asked if I was interested in changing jobs for an obscene amount of money. I think it is the first time that I have been contacted by a recruiter. Quite an empowering experience. I think it might be related to the influx of snail spam I am receiving at work due to my registration for next week's Internet World. Other than that, some desperate company is fishing my business card out of the "win a free meal" fishbowl at Denny's or Subway.

Much testing of the Malibu Luxury this weekend. So far, so good. I know it�s a good mattress when I can sleep for way to long and not be sore or have any aches at all. Also attempted to build sheet inventory by checking out the Strouds Outlet store in Northridge. As expected, pickings were slim for "dual king" and abundant for "California king". I also remembered why things are at outlet stores - most people didn't want them in the first place. I will have to check some of the other stores around the area. Thanks to Mom's suggestion, the one group of sheets we did get was 100% cotton. Strouds, of course, suggests that people have 3 sets of sheets: One on the bed, one in the laundry, and one in the cabinet.


Also rented a DVD from Odyssey video for the first time. They have a great selection of DVD's and videos that you just can't get at Blockbuster. Unfortunately the movie that was selected, "The Watcher" was crap. Another movie with Keanu Reeves showcasing the fact that he can't act and that his limit of memorization of dialog is limited to about 2 minutes of screen time. That seemed to be the maximum amount he appeared at a time.


The rest of the weekend was spent doing laundry and other misc. things around the house. I never realized how many people do their laundry at 3 a.m.

Malibu Luxury has arrived at the apartment. Boy, what a difference a new mattress makes in one's life. The definitive test will be tonight and tomorrow when I get to sleep in late. Now that the mattress is in, the rest of the furniture looks a bit low to the ground. Now mind you, I have the same nightstands that I had as a kid. I guess its time to pony up the money and get some new bedroom furniture and finally part with some dearly beloved items.


Dave Haber gets another mention. He came up with a log file program that allows me to see what people are searching for when they hit certain pages of the site. I get this information from that nasty graphic on the page, but sometimes people leave before it loads. In just a few hours, I see that I am getting a handful of people from Google and Yahoo, so I guess some of the optimization that I have been doing has paid off. After talking with an expert in the area (thanks Andrea!) I am going to redesign the Charo and Gorn homepages to get better results. And hey, it�s been almost three years since the last major redesign of those pages so they are due.

Thanks to Kevin's editorial prowess, I have gone through all of the Daily Update archives and have fixed some of the grammatical and spelling problems that seem to permeate them.


I was thinking of attending a local Star Trek convention to gather some cool Gorn pics with celebrities, but I have discovered a lot has changed with the conventions since the last time I attended one (oh maybe 7 years or so ago). In the olden days, the cast would just go to a table and all the people would wait in line to get the autographs. Under this system, pictures of the celebrities would be easy to come by. For example, I have a spiffy picture of me with George "Sulu" Takei from a Sacramento convention long ago. These days, you have to get "preferred seating" or some other crap even to get a chance to get someone's autograph. Maybe this is the real reason that Star Trek fans are dissatisfied. Sure the stories on recent Trek shows are not that spiffy, but the inability for the random fan to have the chance to meet and chat with the characters without paying $50 a pop has removed one of the key things that made Star Trek great. In the olden days it cost no more than 10 or 15 bucks and you could chat up a storm with all of the attendees. Now they want $50 on top of the $30 to get in to the hall. So it looks like I will not be going and just see if I can pester Garrett Wang the next time I see him at Micelli's.