July 2002 Archives

It's been a week, so let me try and catch up on things that have been going on:


I managed to catch Austin Powers in Goldmember last Thursday. I thought it was pretty funny, some parts were pee-in-the-pants funny while some parts were just "uh yeah, ok, that one must be for Mike's friends". I do wonder if they have painted themselves into a corner and if there is any way to make a funny AP 4.


I still haven't heard back from the mojo job. I called them yesterday and they said they would call be back right away, but alas, I am still waiting. I did get scheduled for an interview for this City of LA job I applied for over a year ago. I guess the city operates on a different time-space plain.


I saw Tommy Lasorda at Disneyland again. He is the first celebrity in Los Angeles I have seen twice (at least that I am aware of). He seemed to have a larger, different group with him this time. For those of you planning a visit to the park in September or early October note that the Matterhorn is down for rehab for about six weeks. A couple of other Fantasyland rides will be down, leaving me to wonder just how many hours I will be getting come September.

Thanks to Ricky (the best former Disneyland CM ever!), who verified that it was broke, I fixed the Club Josh guest book. My guess is that Lycos decided to change the form parameters sometime in June and didn't bother to tell anyone. So if you tried to post, go ahead and give it a try again.


Today it is off to Grandma's house I go to visit my aunt who is flying in from Northern California. I also need to try and get my alarm fixed today, so I better get crackin'! Today is my last leisure day until a week from Friday, and I am trying to get as much sleep/relaxation/goofing off in as possible. Alas, there is many other things I can be doing, but so far laziness reins supreme.

After all the mojo that was sent my way, I ended up with a cancellation. That's right, a cancellation. They did give me a glimmer of hope that the interview will be rescheduled soon. At the present time, I am still waiting a call.

Other than that, a pretty low-key week. I have the next few days off, and then finally the scheduling gods have given me a Friday and a Saturday off next week. It just goes to show that it never hurts to turn in your preference form!

A couple days last week were absolute traffic nightmares. I guess it is one of the idiosyncrasies of living in L.A. and having a long commute - each trip to and from work can be an adventure. Ten o'clock at night - here is bumper to bumper traffic! Two o'clock in the afternoon - zoom to work in record time! Almost there? Motorcycle down - it will now take you three hours to get 5 miles! and all other wacky zaniness.

Last week was also Disneyland's 47th Birthday and it was an interesting experience working there and telling everyone "Happy Birthday" compared to last year when I got to enjoy the new Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln with Cynthia Harriss.

Spent the weekend up in Santa Barbara at the request of Chaos. This was her birthday party - Part 2, this time up at a cabin that she is renting for six weeks up near Lake Cachuma. A great time was had by all - despite the constant buzzing of the bugs and countless mosquito and lord only knows what bites. Alex and Mark even managed to make it down from the Bay Area, and it was good to catch up with them. I always enjoy a trip out into the wilderness where you can see satellites moving across the sky with the naked eye.

Sunday was spent napping and recovering from the late night on Saturday. Thanks to some of Chaos' co-workers, our total sleep was about four hours. Roger and I made a detour on the way home through Simi Valley due to the nasty Sunday afternoon traffic on the 101 - it provided a nice change of scenery as well as being rather quick.

Monday it was off to my favorite shopping mecca - South Coast Plaza. This king of malls always has a special place in my family's heart as many a Christmas-time shopping spree was partaken here. I was disappointed that the Ghiardelli Chocolate store had closed. It was one of the last few remaining not at Glendale Galleria stores left. Glendale is much closer and offers many of the same stores, but does not have the enormous Crate and Barrel and of course, the Cartier and Gucci ambiance.

I also went and explored where the interview I have is tomorrow (or more correctly in less than 12 hours). I am nervous and excited all at the same time. If things go well I will go into more details, but for now just keep sending the good mojo.

Finally - another celebrity sighting: Kathy Ireland at Disneyland near the Info Board on Main Street.

After years and years of waiting, I was finally able to snag Doingworld.com. Ok, maybe not years and years, but since December 1, 1999, I have waited for it to expire. I guess the person neglected to renew it in December and I just now noticed it or it just became available. Either way, I am happy. Back in the 1990's I wanted the domain name to host a more expansive Doingworld site. Dave suggested that I get crackin' on it since I have experience working at a major theme park. Now that I have the domain name, I just might do that. Right after I get the new Daily Update launched.

Tonight I hopefully will finally get to see Lilo and Stitch. I have been wanting to see it since it came out but with work schedules the way they are, time has been premium.

An email surprise today - an actual response from a resume submission! Keep your fingers crossed!

I was surprised that on one of the busiest days of the year at the park, people like Shaq and Kobe would decide to come to the park. Can I just say that Shaq is by far, the largest person I have ever seen? I can't imagine that it was fun for them. When Shaq was on the Matterhorn, he was mobbed as he came on the ride, and mobbed as he left. It was amusing that I got to check his seatbelt. For the record, Shaq and the kid in front of him both had their seatbelts on correctly so there is no excuse when you get on the ride. My only interaction with him was telling him to have a great time to which he responded "Thanks" in his usual soft-spoken voice.


Other than that, the rest of the weekend was pretty low key at the park. I did manage to break Peter Pan for the first time at the console. It really wasn't my fault - we had some wheelchairs that got stuck in the exit so no one could get off the ride. It was nice to be back in my original area after spending the week at the Matterhorn. This week it is back to the Matterhorn all week, but thankfully scheduling has mixed up my locations next week to keep me on my toes.

I have added more months to the New Daily Update, I now only have about seven more months to go before I can launch the new Update site.

Going through April-June 2001 was an interesting experience. There were a few Club Josh projects that have fallen by the wayside (anyone remember the new Jarrepalooza? Me either). The frequency of the Updates has gone way down since I left my previous job and took the summer off before working at Disneyland. I have touched on it before in several Updates, but I still feel like I need to get back to a regular schedule. I know I am not in front of the computer as much as I used to be, but I will still try and make an effort. I think the new Movable Type system will help since it is almost fun to do the entries.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most in going through the archives was the revisit to the Josh Club site of Ford India. As you may or may not recall, Ford introduced the new Ford IKON last year and called it the Josh Machine. They wrote songs about it and launched a cool web site with screensavers and desktop backgrounds (click on downloads). For the 2002 model year, they updated the site with new stuff and some cool advertisements.

And folks, have a safe and sane Fourth of July.

Ever start something that you think is only going to take a few minutes and then when you look up it has been two hours? That is what happened today with the Gorn pictures. It started out innocently enough when I added the photos for the Gorn visiting the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Then I started to notice things here and there that needed to be updated. So I went ahead and made a new Gorn Europe Index page that looks like the other index pages. After I finished that, I went around adjusting fonts here and there. There is so much legacy code on the site, that I really should start from scratch on certain pages and rebuild it from the ground up.


Yesterday was my second day on the Matterhorn and so far things are going OK. I am still a bit nervous about the whole thing, but thankfully the other cast members have been supportive and offering advice to help me out. Thank goodness for the turnstile greeter position so I can catch my breath.

After finally getting the bad butter taste out of my mouth, Roger and I managed to make it out to Palm Springs on Sunday. Our goal? To ride the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Now when I did the research on their web site, I noticed that they had new and improved rotating tram cars. I thought this meant that the cars themselves rotated. As it turns out, the inside of the car rotates, scaring almost all the first time passengers when it starts. In my opinion it was even scarier then when the tram cars make their way over a tower. It brought back all those bad memories from the old Skyway at Disneyland.


We spent about two hours at the tramway, taking in all the vistas and even venturing down the trail towards the ranger station. At that point, we decided to head down to town for dinner instead of dining on the buffeteria at the top of the mountain. Accompanying us on the trip was the Gorn, and I will post pictures of the trip in the next day or two.


Saturday I managed to go out and see Scooby Doo. It was actually a pretty funny no-brains-required film. I enjoyed Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Sara Michelle Gellar as Daphne the best. Walking back to the car, I noticed Seth Green walking with some friends into the Galleria - whee.


At the Aerial Tram Valley Station, I noticed that the car alarm on the CR-V was silent. It still worked, but you could barely hear the beeps. This happened the entire time we were in Palm Springs. On the way home, Roger suggested I call Rock Honda, and we managed to stop in before they closed. The technician replaced the grounding for the alarm, and we were on our way in under 15 minutes. On the way out, I noticed the Xterra was still there on the Used Car lot. Poor thing has been sitting there for over a month.