May 2003 Archives

Take two.

I'm having to recreate this entry from scratch since due to a lovely user error, the entry did not get saved. And it was an awesome one too. Here goes:

I've been busy celebrating Daniel and David's birthday and getting ready for Alex's wedding. So much so, that I haven't had much time for updates. Also, Memorial Day signals the start of the summer season at the park and there have been some mondo crowds. The upside is that I am getting some good hours. There is also some rumblings that things might be a changing, and there is a chance that those changes will help my career at the park .

Last Friday was the big celebration for Daniel's 26th birthday at my house. I had a feeling in my bones that things were going to happen at the party, and boy was I not disappointed. What do I have to show for it? A lovely red stain on the carpet from either a Wine Cooler or a mini bottle of wine. I know, you are asking yourself, "Josh, where were you, why didn't you stop it from happening?" Truth be told, I was feeling the effects of some home brewed Jungle Juice that was made from a recipe off of Webtender.com. Daniel and I modified the Eben's Magic Juice recipe from Orange to Grape. It tasted like Dimetapp, but after a couple of Smirnoff Ices, it tasted just fine. As a direct result of the stain, I am pretty sure that all future parties will only feature colorless beverages. It did remind me of the time Susie and Matt threw Oreos and Candy Corn at the wall in my Davis apartment at several gatherings to get those items banned.

Needless to say, I had my first encounter with the porcelain god. It was a rather bizarre experience. I certainly didn't feel like I was drunk or out of control. I remember blabbing to some of my guests about this or that. I remember being tired and putting my head down on the floor. And for some reason, the floor started to push back on me. Next thing I know, I tell my friend Alex that I don't feel so good. Good thing too, cuz the next thing I know, I am doing a good Bill Cosby impersonation over the toilet. At least I didn't comfort myself on the side of the bowl, but I admit I was glad I had cleaned the toilet earlier in the day. After that, I don't really remember much just that somehow I went to bed, and that some other people were crashing on the futon.

The next day, I awoke in a haze and discovered that Tiffany and Alex were all that was left of the group. Daniel joined us early on in the day, and Tiffany discovered that someone had broken into her car with an open window and took her purse and stereo. She was comforted by, as she puts it, a fine police officer. To get her mind off of it and on a whim, we headed up to Hollywood to the Hollywood Wax Museum and the nearby Guinness Book of Records Museum. The best part was the chamber of terror in the Wax Museum were we all clung together to get through it. Personally, I thought the regular ones were creepy enough - and waay to realistic for my liking. After the museums, we looked for the Cramatorium (where they put the Cram contestants during their study sessions) and then headed over to the Hustler store and Amoeba Records.

The rest of the week has been pretty low key. I did pick up my tuxedo and wedding gift for Alex's wedding. Susie is supposed to be my date, but she is waffling at the last minute (If you are reading this Susie, think of poor me forced to drive all by myself **sniff, sniff**). I am looking forward to going up to the Bay Area. Too bad Matt is going to be going to San Diego, I'd have liked to swing through Davis and Sacramento to visit, but it looks like I'll be heading back home.

Oh and one more thing. The USGS is having their semi-every-couple-of-years Open House in Menlo Park. It is one of the coolest things to go visit. Kind of like the Exploratorium on crack. It is also where I picked up my coffee mug with the seismograph reading of the Good Friday Quake in Alaska. If you are in the area this weekend, it is worth the trip!

Last week, I was doing some research for the new redesign and I came across a page from the Southern California Association of Governments that had the word "maglev" on it. Intrigued, I stumbled across this page, which describes the plans to get a high speed maglev rail system in place in Los Angeles in the next 25 years. Your Tax Dollars at work. As I wandered through the not-very-user friendly site, I thought, "Man, this would be a great addition to Tomorrowland". I think this would be a great replacement for the Monorail, and I'm sure Disney could get one up and running pretty quickly.

The 8th Anniversary of my web site is coming up next month, and I think it is long overdue for a redesign. That is why today, I am committing myself to getting a new site up and running by June 28, 2003. This will be a big undertaking, but I think it will be a good workout for my creative juices.

Here are my goals:
1. Create a common look and feel for the entire site. Currently my site is a hodge-podge of different looks and feels I have experimented over the many years of doing the site. I think the Jarrepalooza section has changed the least and the main index page the most.

2. Fix the PDA Site: This has been offline since I switched over to Movable Type. I need to just sit down and getting it up and running. Honestly, this is one of the easiest things to do.

3. Move all the photos into the Gallery program: All the photos from the Gorn to Charo to Trip Diaries to Club House pics all need to be ported over to Gallery. Another easy task, the difficult bit being the custom look for the different galleries. Another long-overdue upgrade.

4. New Club Josh store items and logos: I need to come up with a better logo for the shirts and expand the catalog to include calendars and such. A low-priority item that is really for my own amusement.

5. New Doingworld site: This is certainly at the bottom, but more work and expansion needs to be done to this little neglected hobby of mine.

6. Cut off the dead weight: Some sections just might go bye-bye. Not sure which ones, but party photos are high up on the list. I certainly don't want to just erase the last 6 years or so, but I think some editing of the photos are in order. At the very least, a lot of older photos need to be remastered to my new size specs (gotta keep up with evolving standards ya know).

7. Mobile phone site: Convert the HDML site into uber-cool WML site. Another easy task, but will require some hard scrubbing of the text files generated by MT. I might have to call in the big guns (Dave are u out there?).

So that is what I want to do in a little over a month and a half. Personally, I think it is pretty ambitious for someone who takes forever. I think the hardest part will be coming up with a new template. After that, it should be pretty easy. If you are a regular reader of Club Josh let me know what you think needs some work, and I will try and put it on the list. Heck, even if you stumbled across the site let me know!

The last few days have been spent recovering from Tuesday's festivities. On Thursday, Reed paid a visit to his Mom's house in Irvine and we had a chance to meet up and grab a bite to eat. It was nice to catch up on all things UC Davis as well as see Reed. In a way, Reed and the gang at UCD were my surrogate family after I graduated college. My mom and brother all moved to Arizona, and I was pretty much on my own. Thankfully, I had the UCD gang to look out after me. They sure did teach me a lot. An example: Reed's rule of probability: given any 50-50 situation, you are bound to be wrong 80% of the time. If a job opened back up on campus in their department, I would seriously consider taking it. the only catch is that Matt and Steve are the only other people I still am in contact with up there.

Speaking of Matt, we were on the phone today for three hours. I am rarely on the phone that long with anyone these days, but it was sure nice to catch up with him. I'm sad he won't be up there when I visit on the 31st, but he will be near San Diego for six weeks so hopefully we'll get together a few times. I sure do wish my friends were a lot closer. It's tough when they are scattered from LA to No Cal to Montana and to Europe. I sure wish they would invent transporters.

It has been quite a catch up week: In addition to Matt and Reed, I also have had the opportunity to catch up with Lev and Haim. I need to do a better job of keeping up with people!

Last night, Daniel, Tiffany, Alex, and I participated in Minnie's Moonlight Madness at DCA. I wasn't sure what to expect, just random insight from Daniel since he participated two years ago. It started with a presentation to the Make a Wish foundation (all registration fees went to the organization - somewhere in the neighborhood of $4k was raised - not too bad). We then were read the rules as well as subjected to a 50 question trivia quiz. I think we did OK on the quiz, but it was probably our weakest part. Thank goodness Daniel is a trivia nerd or we really would have been sunk.

After the trivia it was on to the scavenger hunt. Mandel had mentioned it was very similar to the Amazing Race and it was. What did I learn? The contestants on AR must be exhausted beyond all belief. I know I was after two hours walking quickly (not running) around DCA. Some of the highlights: Making a paper cup, Geo-quiz which I aced in 5 minutes, Daniel and Tiffany doing the Hula, Counting the number of blue lights on the Mickey Head on the coaster, and other fun stuff. It was a memorable night - I even ran into Leo and Ian as well as a myriad of other familiar faces from the park. Leo and his team even came in 3rd! No sign of Mandel's roomies though - of course I wasn't exactly looking while racing around.

I did manage to get a nice T-Shirt and a flashlight that clips to your belt (perfect for the Matterhorn) as well as the obligatory pin. I even managed to get an extra pin for Mice. Originally, I added wrong and thought I didn't have an extra one. Then I realized our team only had four members. Alex and Tiffany had to try and retrieve her camera which was left at the last clue (we had 5 minutes to get from Pizza Oom Mow Mow to the Clue Central Area near the Golden Vine Winery. When they returned the camera was gone. Thankfully I do have a couple of pictures from my camera:

Daniel and Alex work on one of the clues
Tiffany and Daniel learn the hula to get one of the answers
Tiffany, Alex, Minnie, Daniel and Josh pose after the competition

After all of our hard work, today I found out we finished 54th/255 - not bad!

(ed. note - Several updates from the past few days have all been posted today - check 'em out!)

Continuing on from the last post (posted a bit late), I also managed to catch X-Men 2 on the big screen. I was glad that Daniel and I saw the early show to beet the crowds. From my understanding it was a busy weekend for the movie and it was nice to get good seats for an opening day. I think the second movie was better than the first, and provided a good solid two hours of entertainment. This is not the type of movie you rate on artistic quality or acting, but on popcorn value aka how well the brain is amused. I guess the only fault is from a personal point of view. I don't read comics and I have only seen bits and pieces of the old X-Men cartoon - so a lot of it is lost on me. Did the movie make me want to learn more? Not really - but it did make me want to see the next one when it comes out.

Sunday saw the return of the Happy Hearts to Disneyland. It is an outreach program during the slow times of the year that the company does for people with disabilities. For the reduced rate of $18, people who wouldn't normally get a chance to visit the park get to do so. I think it is a wonderful program, despite the many challenges it brings to operations of attractions. Other guests seem to be understanding when it takes place, and its a good thing since there are usually long delays when the rides break down or people need extra time to visit the attraction. Both the Routes and Pooh have been hit hard during the week, but I think its a good thing for new cast members to experience.

This week's movie reviews concentrate on some movies that were hyped when they came out. All of them I had been eager to see due to the hype, and my big concern was that they wouldn't live up to it. Did they? Let's see:

The first movie was Y Tu Mama Tambien. When this movie came out in 2001, it was hyped due to rampant sex that occurs in the movie as well as some brief bits of male nudity. Well, I went into the movie expecting rampant sex, and lo and behold there was some sex and glimpses of male nudity, but in reality it was nothing that was along the lines of the OMG/eye-popping variety. I thought the movie was well done, though a bit hard to follow at times. I think subtitled movies have to be extra good in order to make up for the fact that you have to do more work by reading at the same time as watching the movie. I wish I had one of those Matrix plugs so I could understand the Spanish and concentrate on the movie more. I recall a similar problem with the 400 blows as well as Fellini's Roma - both good movies that struggled with my attention - maybe its the complexity.

Moving on to the second DVD of the week: Best in Show. This movie was also highly rated and regarded. For me, this movie fell into the "If I get time, I'll see it" category. I have always been a big fan of the SCTV alums and their projects, and after hearing endless good things about their latest movies "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show", and the fact they had a new movie coming out soon, I decided to give it a spin in the player. My blase about wanting to see the movie was carried over into my opinion of the movie. It certainly had its moments, and its amazing to think that the majority of it was unscripted. I think Fred Willard's improv skills shine the most above a great ensemble cast. Did I think it was worth seeing? Yes. Did I think it was as good as hyped? Not really.