Club Josh Daily Update

I am currently mid-upgrade of my infrastructure for the Club Josh Daily Update. I went with the fresh install of the software, but it seems to be having some difficulties with the template system. I am upgrading from MT 3.2 to 4.12 which is a HUGE jump, so it looks like there is some massaging of the templates that need to be done.

Until then, the content in the archives is all there, it just looks all messed up. The big problem is the individual pages are not formatting correctly, and the main index page is not auto-building to the new templates.

At least the front page is still fine.

Oh and a shout out to Scott who identified the mystery Doctor Who episode as "The Invasion of Time" with Tom Baker. The good news is that it gets released on DVD on September 2, so I have already put it into my Netflix queue.

Posted by Josh at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Things are settling down nicely here at Club Josh. After a month or so of stress over a project I was working on at work, it is finally done and presented. The past few months, I was in the Emerging Leader program at Disneyland which is a way that the resort trains its new Managers. It is a very challenging and rewarding program and I am happy that I was not only selected, but completed it successfully. I know I owe a lot of people for their support and feedback over the years.

The next month or so will be exciting times. Daniel, Tiffany, Tyger, and I will be participating in Minnie's Moonlight Madness - a charity benefit scavenger hunt throughout the park this month. Also, Charo is having a mini-CD release party sometime near the 22nd - no details yet, but it might be my first adventure to Casa Charo!

I also find out what is next for me at work sometime that week as well, so it will be nice to know where I am going and what I am doing for the summer and beyond.

In car news, I am still loving the new CR-V. I like the sound it makes when accelerating and the new car smell overpowers any food items that I have to transport in it. Still haven't eaten in the car yet, we will see how long that it lasts!

Posted by Josh at 9:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have read my entries from my last vacation, specifically this one you will know that my old digital camera had this issue with losing the reference to some photos resulting in them vanishing from the ether. After doing some research, I found a software application that recovers such files of digital media. I was stoked that I was able to recover most of the lost photos from Norway and London, and I had always wondered if I could get my Australia missing photos back.

On Day 7 of my Australia trip, Mom, Gary, and I went to see the Penguin parade. When we arrived, I discovered that about 17 or so photos were missing - mainly of our hotel room and one or two of the journey to Phillip Island. I had actually forgotten about the missing photos until the last week or so when I was going through my Australia photos on Flickr. So in a last ditch effort, I plugged in my media card and ran the program.

I am very happy to report that 7 of the photos have been recovered! They are the photos of the Sebel Suites in Melbourne, a very nice enjoyable hotel that is on the Club Josh recommended lodgings list!

Here is the link to the first of the lost photos that are contained in the Australia photo set.

Posted by Josh at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally have added the Gorn in Europe 2007 gallery to the site. There are now 732 pictures of everyone's favorite globe trotter for all to enjoy. It seemed weird adding the photos to the Gallery site since I already have them up on the Flickr site. I wish there was a better way of integrating the two to avoid redundancy. I could transfer everything over to Flickr, but I think in the case of the Gorn site, I like having it as its own entity and not on another server. I like Flickr for the travel photos since I can easily update them while I am on vacation. So there will be some overlap, but with the Gorn photos I actually take the time to do some photoshop work on the photos as well as re-size them. I was going to just add the raw jpg files, but that would have taken forever!

Posted by Josh at 1:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the second year in a row, I have put together a calendar on Cafe Press' Club Josh Galleria. I have the same complaints from last year regarding the lack of more customization, but since last year's calendar came out so well I decided to give it another shot. This year, I highlight my trip to Europe. Since the trip was longer than Australia, I had a more difficult time narrowing down the choices.

Here are the monthly photos:
January - Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway
February - Cardiff Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Wales, UK
March - Undredal Brygge, Norway
April - Stirling Castle, Stirling, Scotland, UK
May - Parliament and Big Ben, London, UK
June - Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, Scotland, UK
July - Steps near the Sacre Couer Funicular, Paris, France
August - Frogner Parken, Oslo, Norway
September - Tower Bridge, London, UK
October - Catacombs, Paris, France
November - Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, UK
December- Tour Eiffel, Paris, France

Pick yours up today!

Posted by Josh at 3:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This weekend I celebrated my 35th birthday - a celebration so big it actually took three days. It has been 5 years since my last "themed" birthday party and I really wanted to do another one this year. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, I have been focusing on my impending vacation to really have the time and effort to plan a major party so I decided to go to dinner with some friends to the Magic Castle in Hollywood. Due to some people's schedules and other activities not everyone I wanted to go with was able to go on my actual birthday so I ended up going on Friday.

Things actually started on Thursday when Daniel and a few of his friends surprised me with some cake and pizza. It was a nice low key affair that really got the ball rolling. Friday night, a few of us headed out to the Magic Castle. For those of you not from LA, the Magic Castle is a private club for magicians. Lev is a card carrying member of the club and he was able to get us inside. We saw a variety of magicians and had a great dinner. Our favorite magician of the night was Phil Van Tee. We found him in one of the rooms in the basement and he did some cool magic tricks for us and even stole my watch. I think he is going to invite Tiffany to be on his demo tape since she had the best reactions.

The only down side to the whole night was on the way home. Daniel, Tiffany,and I went in my car to my house while Tara, Brian, and Leslie went in Brian's car. Just as they were getting off the freeway near their apartment, their car slammed into the back of a stalled car on the freeway. They were then hit by two other cars. they were all sent to the hospital, but only Leslie stayed overnight for observation. the other two were treated and released. It was a very scary situation and I am glad that I got the best birthday one could ask for - the safety of your friends when they are in an accident. I wish them all a speedy recovery.

Saturday, I went with the Family to Miceli's in Hollywood. Last year we went to the one in North Hollywood near my old apartment, but Dad and the others wanted to go to Hollywood this time. We loved the food and we even tried to stump the pianist. We went back to the house where I opened my presents and got some sweatshirts and some much needed household gifts. I especially liked the knick nacks my aunt gave me and the ever popular thermal undies!

Today I capped off my birthday weekend with a good old fashioned lazy day. It will be my last one for a few weeks as tomorrow is mad dash to get ready day and then Tuesday I am off on my trip. I should have decent internet coverage overseas so keep your eyes posted for blogs and photos from across the pond.

Posted by Josh at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This trip is driving me crazy!

The other day I practically had a nervous breakdown with trying to find a place to stay in Paris. Every place that I looked at was missing a day in the block of time that I am going to be staying there. I finally decided to stay at a hotel Mom, Gary, and I stayed at 10 years ago! Apparently it has changed hands and has been completely made over so it will be nice to see it for the first time again. I love staying in the Rue Cler district of Paris (that is the 7th) for those of you keeping score of the Paris districts). Jonathan will be visiting us in Paris, but will be staying elsewhere. I wanted to get this groovy apartment that we found on a web site, but in the end it proved too expensive and you have to pay in advance. It was over 1400 bucks for 7 nights - no thanks to the lousy mileage the dollar is getting vs the euro.

At any rate, I am looking forward to our time in Paris - I will get to reconnect with some friends I made from Disneyland Paris when they were visiting California as well as getting to see Jonathan for the first time since 2004 in Japan. As an added bonus, I found out they have tickets to the new Most Haunted Live special that will be airing in the UK over the 5 nights we will be in London and in Cardiff. Hopefully, we will get selected for tickets to the show. It is one of the things that Daniel and I wanted to do while we were overseas.

Added to everything else, it is my birthday next week and I am actually celebrating this year! It is not the fancy parties of a decade ago, but it will be a nice dinner at the Magic Castle in Hollywood thanks to my friend Lev. I do wish Susie, Mark, Alex, Matt, Wendy/Mice,.Cooper, Kibble, Nathan, and Jonathan were around locally so they could be part of the fun. I miss the good old days when we were all in the same area.

Completely unrelated - I have signed up for the USGS Earthquake Notification Service. I know it is super geeky, but I love the fact you can set what magnitude quake will result in a text message to my cell phone. I can also get a HTML email, but I like getting the text messages. I have it set for 4.0 for the US and 6.0 for the World. It seems to be the right balance so I get interesting quakes and yet do not exceed my texting allowance for the month.

Posted by Josh at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well I am back from a bit of a hiatus!

I went ahead and updated my photos from my two weekend getaways - Solvang and San Francisco. The trip to Solvang includes a stop over at the Kwik-E-Mart in Burbank. I thought it was rather cleverly done, despite the fact the Buzz Cola and the donuts were a little nasty tasting.

Speaking of Simpsons, I attempted to break out of my non-movie watching slump and went last night to the movies to see The Simpsons Movie. We arrived about 15 minutes early and after buying tickets and stopping at the bathroom, we ended up in the theater 10 minutes before it started. We were surprised to find the movie starting already. We shrugged it off and settled in to try and enjoy the movie. 10 minutes into the movie (or the real start time) it just stopped. I theorize that they discovered it was already running and were trying to figure out how to stop and re-wind. Unfortunately. after 45 minutes of delays and dealing with the hordes of obnoxious kids and teens in the theater, they finally told us that they were going to give us our money back.

Me and Daniel had been iffy about going to the Block at Orange to see movies lately since the patrons seem prone to interrupt movies and the quality of the facility is on the decline. After this incident (despite being comped the movie and given a re-ad for another movie), it will be a long time before we go back here. There are plenty of newer and nicer facilities out there.

One last photo note, I finally updated the Gorn page with the photos that I have taken in the last 8 months. It has been awhile and I was a little rusty getting them up, but hopefully I will get more into the groove.

Posted by Josh at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is my last day of my four day weekend and I had big plans to do laundry and to work on Club Josh. I have been frustrated because I cannot find my flash card reader. This is an essential piece to get the photos out of my digital camera and onto Club Josh. I think I might have to go and get a new one otherwise my photos from the Nemo Opening and Solvang will remain hidden forever.

In a quick survey of my site, I see that I am way behind on almost all of the pages. I will have to try and get some of it done later this week since my lack of flash drive has forced me to focus on housecleaning. I am glad I have a washer-dryer since it has allowed me to get a lot done. I do get overwhelmed sometimes by the cleaning in my apartment and despite me trying to keep on top of it, it always seems out of control. I can only imagine what people with lots of extra rooms must go through.

Oh and no Trek convention this year - Tiffany can't get away. I still would like to take a quick four day out of town trip soon before the big one. I still cannot believe how much airfare has gone up to Europe!

Posted by Josh at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its Anniversary day here at Club Josh. I wish there was a big redesign or something, but I am still recovering from the opening of Nemo. The last two weeks have improved a bit despite setbacks here and there. I am diving headfirst into many challenges and it has been keeping me busy. It is interesting how Charo traffic has slowed to a crawl since her ad was pulled last year. Some new videos have popped up on YouTube which I will have to link. Also, my new Jarre album is on its way from France thanks to Reed's gift certificate - Thanks Reed!!

Some of the highlights of the past two weeks:
I got my cell phone back and it actually worked. The divers did a good job drying it out and I would have kept the phone except for the fact that it locked itself as I was resetting it. I could not get it unlocked nor could I retrieve any data from it. The good thing is that I didn't have much on it since I had only had the phone for 40 days. Verizon actually ended up giving me a new phone gratis and to boot, my memory card from the phone survived and is back in action in my new Q.

I finally found a Nintendo Wii and decided to treat myself. It has been a plan to do 30 min of Wii-exercise every day to get into shape so we will see how much I can do.

Tara, Leslie, Daniel and I went to see Pirates 3 at the El Capitan last week. I think I enjoyed it better the second time around and to boot we got to see the Ratatouie Premiere at the Kodak Theater across the street. We saw most of the usual Disney Channel celebs as well as Andy Garcia. I mentioned to Daniel that we probably could have gotten in since most of the security and wranglers worked the Pirates premiere.

They are painting the outside of my complex this week. They are going with some terracotta colors that are all the rage these days. I'm sure it will be reflected in my next rent increase.

I am busy planning my next trip overseas. It will be definitely with Europe. Daniel is coming along and we are trying to narrow down our overzealous list of destinations. I do know that I want to meet up with Jonathan in Geneva and Mom and Gary in Spain. Other than that Daniel wants to go to Disneyland Paris and Oslo, and I want to see Scotland and of course stay in some hotels featured on Most Haunted. We are heading to a travel agency this weekend to see if we can get a handle on dates etc. so I will have more details later.

Posted by Josh at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the coolest things now is to create your own map on Google. Called "My Maps" this feature allows you to create marks on the map as well as polygons and lines to do a bit of amateur cartography. I have decided to use it to map all of the locations the Gorn has been to since 1992. This of course, will be close to where I have been since 1992, and probably will mirror closely the map on my wall. I will eventually post this on the Gorn site when I am done with it. So far I am in 1994 working on Dome to Dome Twice (where the first Gorn was lost in Yellowstone).

Check out my progress

Posted by Josh at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After years and years of using Cafe Press and not selling anything but the occasional T-shirt to myself, I finally put together a calendar. I have always wanted to do a "Best of Gorn" calendar, but there is so many photos out there I would always get overwhelmed and stop midway through creating it. The last time I finished a custom calendar was in 1995 for the Dome to Dome Twice Official Calendar.

This year I did not receive a calendar for Christmas, so I decided the time was right for me to make one again. I decided to get together some photos of my Australian trip last March and viola!

I do wish Cafe Press allowed me to customize the dates a bit more to put relatives birthdays etc. on it, but I am pretty happy with the result. There are a few photos that ended up a tad blurry since they were taken at night, but most are crisp and sharp.

Here are the monthly photos:
January - Sydney Opera House
February - Twelve Apostles, Victoria
March - Uluru at Sunset
April - Skyrail, Cairns, Australia
May - View of The Basin from Coasters Retreat
June - Melbourne from Rialto Tower
July - Kangaroo, Euroka Clearing, Blue Mountains National Park
August - Manly Beach
September - Trolley Car, Melbourne
October - Sydney Harbour Bridge at Sunset
November - Barron Falls
December - Melbourne at Night

One may wonder why there are no Great Barrier Reef photos in the calendar. When I was assembling the photos, all the reef photos were taken with the disposable underwater camera and are not the same resolution as the rest and would have stuck out like a sore thumb. Oh well, there is always next time.

Would you like to get a 2007 Australia Calender - a Club Josh Exclusive? You can order it at the Club Josh Galleria. Enjoy!

Posted by Josh at 10:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Looking back on the past year, I can honestly say it was a pretty good year. I always get nervous saying things like that because invariably the other shoe drops and things just snowball downhill. But some pretty amazing things happened to me this year and only a smattering of negatives cropped up. I hope 2007 is the year that things go to the next level on several fronts.

Highlights of 2006:
Australia with Mom and Gary (which contained many, many moments in itself)
Meeting Charo, Bob Iger, and Ed Grier
Seeing Matt and Steve again
Two brand new states
Two friends getting married
A Lead at Buzz
Project Lead!!

Lowlights:
The passing of my grandfather
Cyst removal and the ensuing scar
Weight gain from cyst removal
Stupid Left eye
Manhattan size earwax removal

Hmm it might seem like I had a plethora of health issues this past year, but in fact I did not miss a single day of work due to sickness this year. Even when I had the cyst removed I did it over my weekend and thus was back to work the next day - although I did bleed through a few Buzz costumes. I also gained at least 10 pounds from inactivity and probably age related issues. For the first time in years I am actively pursuing ways to loose weight. I am over 200lbs for the first time in my life and I would love to be back in the 180s. I will try and eat better and walk more. I will see how it goes and if push comes to shove I will bite the bullet and get a personal trainer so I look hot and cute for the attraction premiere in June.

I do miss my grandfather Bill, but I do know that he is in a MUCH better place than where he was the last few years of his life suffering from a form of Parkinson's and other muscular degeneration.

As for travel, I did visit a new country and two new states in 2006. I did not get a chance to see Kris or Nathan, but I did see Alex and Mark for the first time in ages. Susie and Mark got married this year (not to each other, but to fine spouses) and I could not be happier for both of them. It always makes me reflect on my relationships, but I know my time will come someday and it is not something I really want to rush.

So here is to 2007! It looks like the first 6 months will be VERY interesting and full of things to learn.

Posted by Josh at 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Club Josh has been without a reliable web stats tool since I converted to the new server, but I finally installed AWStats a few days ago. I haven't had a chance for the log files to start working in the format so I can separate the different servers out of the traffic, but I will hopefully be able to see what exactly is happening with the Charo Site. I know traffic is booming again thanks to the GEICO commercial, and the site is regularly pulling in numbers that I haven't seen since the Sprint PCS commercial and the Surreal Life days.

In other site news, my Flickr no longer publishes to Club Josh and I am not sure why. I know the site itself is running correctly, but for some reason Flickr doesn't like my Movable Type APIs. I will keep investigating them, but in the meantime be sure to keep checking Flickr for the latest photos.

I recently finished captioning the Japan photos and the Hong Kong photos. Now I just need to finish the Australia ones. I am half way done but with over 300 photos it takes a long time. I am hoping to get them finished so I can print a photo book (one of the main reasons I put my travel photos on Flickr) and also to make a calendar for 2007.

There are also some Daily Update things I need to dive into and tweak and it is weird that now I am on Day shifts at work, I actually have time at night to sit down and go through code and fix things.

Posted by Josh at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are now 700 entries on the Daily Update. Considering I started it back in 2000, I thought there would be a lot more but I've gotten over the post for the sake of posting thing. (OK, well maybe except this post - ha). I do suffer from a sense of frustration in that there have been things in my life that I wanted to post about but either got lazy or out of the posting habit and they never ended up here.

So what is Josh's blog frustration 2006? There are so many tools and tricks for Movable Type that I've completely been passed up and I get the feeling that it might be awhile before I catch up. Sometimes I wish I was working in an office again because I'd have more time to analyze the site and work on it without all the other distractions that abound at home.

Oh and the real reason behind this post is that there was a glitch in my MT CGI that was throwing the post engine to the wrong server. So hopefully this post will successfully prove that I fixed it.

Posted by Josh at 9:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apparently I need to read documentation more carefully, despite my deep rooted feelings that its cheating. At any rate, it took me an hour of tinkering to get my Thunderbird program to be able to see the new email server. Despite the fact my email has not changed, a lot on the backend has. This means it is slightly more of a pain to log on to webmail programs like Mail2web to access my account, but overall I am happy with it.

Still working on Trip Diaries, though to no surprise, I got sidetracked looking for the original versions of my Sweden photos and ended up loading my Japan photos from March 2004 on Flickr. Now if only I had extra time to put captions on them. Then again, there is a lot I have forgotten over the past two years. Oh well...

Japan March 2004

Posted by Josh at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you can see this, the new server is online and working.

Pardon the dust as the final pieces are put together.

Things that might not work:
Trip Diaries photos - I am still trying to get all the photos back to where they were before the move at the same time trying to put Disneyland Paris in the same program as Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Florida. I am also trying to move French Polynesia and Chicago to Flickr. This will mean non-Disney travel photos will be on Flickr and Disney Travel photos hosted locally.

PDA/Mobile sites - these have been replaced by the "Lite"version which is on the back burner with no release date. Considering there really was not much traffic to it anyways, I doubt many people have missed it. However if you use your cell phone to browse the site, things will be broken.

Daily Update Archives - They look funny, but are all CSS templates so I can change the look and feel with a click of a button. I still need to tweak here and there so some bits might not display correctly.

As always if you notice something amiss please let me know.

This is the first server move in 6 years and it really has been a pain since it took 2 months! Also Email will be spotty as the domain gets routed to the new DNS servers and to the new site, so if it gets bounced, just drop me an email to my gmail account or to my work account.

Posted by Josh at 12:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my roomie (the one on the couch) has smashed his car. It has been a minor inconvenience but nothing more to carpool until his dad comes out this week to assess the situation and then get him back up and running. He hopes his dad will co-sign for a new car for him, but his dad is leaning towards just fixing the old one. To top things off, he has to go up to the High Desert to resolve a problem with his bank account since someone tried to use his account from Norway. I tell you he has a swath of destruction following him around. I am convinced he mad a pact with the devil and now he is collecting the dues.

I finally decided to throw the towel in and just move the Trip Diaries section over as-is minus some of the photos just for the sake of getting the move done and to get back on track writing entries. I hope to get this accomplished this week. The anniversary is coming up and I want to be able to proclaim a re-launch by then.

Tomorrow is my first for real project shift and I am excited to say the least. I can’t wait until I’m there 100% of the time.

Posted by Josh at 5:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is taking forever!! I have run into so many problems, I just hope I can get them all ironed out this week..

Posted by Josh at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I did it. Money be damned. Well at least it will give me something to focus on rather than sitting on my butt feeling sorry for myself. I splurged for my new web hosting and in the next week or so I will be moving all of my domains over to the new site. You might notice some things starting to change, but hopefully it will be a seamless transition. I will tell you some things will disappear forever, but I have made a complete backup of the site so all will not be lost.

The move will be complete when I post a note here as well as you see the Gorn photos from Australia online. I know, it has been a month, but because I am out of server space, I can't post them. Also look for a new Daily Update Archives design - no, I haven't made it yet but it shouldn't take me too long.

Maybe I'll get it all done by the 11th anniversary?

Posted by Josh at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well it has been a week since I have been back from Australia. It hardly seems like only a week, it feels like a month! Returning home to an empty house is never fun after spending 24-7 with travel companions. I jet lagged the first few days and was glad to get back to work – just so I could have something to do. I will admit to it being strange to be back at work as if nothing happened at all. I guess I always hope that something will have fundamentally changed since I have been gone, but in reality nothing does.

There are some changes while I was gone and not all of them good. Some of the problems I can’t go into details on such a public forum, but rest assured they don’t have to do with me. However, they are a bit of a downer to me, since I had gotten my hopes up that certain things would fall into place for people and they haven’t. Also at work, things are up in the air since they have not settled our union contract and we are working on a day-to-day basis with the old one. I guess no one in the union cares about us since there is no communications or updates that are easily accessible to the rank and file. Just a random flyer that says a federal mediator is involved. I don’t think we will go as far as a strike, and in reality it is just a bit of a pain for everyone involved.

One thing that has happened in Australia since I left is that Cyclone Larry hit 50km south of Cairns and basically leveled the place. I don't think damage was extensive in Cairns, but I think of people like Hans-Jorg as well as the lady who sold us the Quicksilver tickets and all the rest of the residents we came in contact with and I hope they are all OK and managed to weather the storm just fine.

On the home front, I was glad to come home to a clean-for-me house, which I promptly messed up. I have had a lot of free time these days. Seems most of my friends have been busy or otherwise working opposite schedules so I have been being a bad boy staying up to all hours of the night. One of the bonuses of staying up is that I get to chat with Chris from Brisbane. He is usually coming home from work at the same time I come home when I close at Disneyland late. We usually chat online, and he’s actually called me as well with his phone card. I need to get a phone card to return the favor because lord knows how much it would cost if I called him direct. It sucks that we live so far apart – I think we would have a lot of fun if we got to hang out.

I think the important thing I need to do with my free time is to not waste it by just vegging out or sleeping in to all hours of the day (Ok, I am still working on the sleeping in thing haha). It is difficult because of the hours that I work. This time of the year I open early on the weekends and then close late on Monday thru Wednesday, which doesn’t leave much time to get projects done. It is almost like I should take an extra day off sometime and work around the house – assuming I don’t just sleep in and be lazy.

On the Club Josh front, I have found a new hosting service Text Drive. They have a package called Mixed Grill where you can get 2GB of hosting space plus a 9GB storage area, and a hosted application suite called Joynet. All for the low price of $499 lifetime! That means in two years or so it will have paid for itself – and it will allow me to move stuff like Charo and Doingworld to their own domains.

Posted by Josh at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The time has finally come. I hit (and actually smashed through) my disk quota on the Club Josh server. As a result, I have been having e-mail issues for a bit. So a quick call to my hosting provider and they determined that a simple reduction of 5MB would get me back in the good graces. After a quick run through of the directory sizes, I decided to pull off the A-V Day photos. The whole directory was just around 6MB and since it was backed up already, was an easy choice.

This of course is a milestone. I have 600MB on my server and they are all full. Luckily, I have Flickr to post the Australia photos starting next week. I made up my mind to buy a new server space that would allow me greater control over my domains, but I decided to hold off until after I get back from my trip. With so much to do before I leave on Wednesday, I think its best not to get distracted.

Speaking of getting ready, I can't recommend Flight 001 enough. It is a fantastic site and a cool store to boot. I decided to swing by the store on my way home from the shop and get a new toiletries bag to replace my 10 year old one (eww!). They had all kinds of cool bags and accessories. I nearly bought another shoulder bag, but I decided three is enough. Now I just need to figure out which one I will use.

Also as part of the pre-trip festivities, I purchased a new camcorder. My old Edmunds-gifted Sony has been dead since October 2001, and I figured a trip down under would be a worthy time to get one. I originally ordered a top of the line camera on the net, but all the places were either out of stock or unable to ship in time. So I decided on the low end Canon ZR500. It just came out at CES this year and is super lightweight and features the basic elements of all the ZR line just no ability to take still images. Personally, I would never want to do that since I have a good digital camera, so it was a good deal.

I need to do a baseline test of the audio to see what it will be like with a noisy background. I might need to resurrect the old Dome to Dome Twice microphone!

Posted by Josh at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks to my new pro account on Flickr, I have posted the long awaited Hong Kong 2005 and Japan October 2004 Non-Disney photos. I am still not 100% happy with Flickr since I had to try and use the Uploader program several times for it to take my photos. I also don't like sending people to other sites, but I think I can work around that and have the slideshow pop open a new window when people select it.

Still to come: Europe 2002, Japan March 2004, and Boston 2005. Of course, just on the horizon is the Australia trip so there are those photos to look forward to as well. I do not have any plans to migrate Charo or Gorn photos to the site. The Disney photos are also staying put since I like the way they are organized here (well mostly).

Speaking of Charo - This fan of Charo's named David has been in touch with me on and off for the last year or so, and he finally got to meet Charo yesterday. He then left me a message saying that I should expect a call from her. When I got home today, there was a voicemail from her husband Kjell! I was floored. I am hoping to get in touch with them soon. David has hopefully opened the door to getting an up to date and accurate list of appearances for all of her fans. Stay tuned!!

One other little nugget: I went up to the Walt Disney Studios to the Welcome Home Celebration for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It was mostly a bust but I did get to score an Oswald button and then go over to Imagineering and pick up a cool jacket I had been lusting after. I was with Daniel and we decided to go to lunch at Bob's Big Boy on Riverside Drive in Burbank (right near Warner's and NBC Studios). I mentioned to Daniel that David Lynch likes to eat there (see older entries for more). So the lady who was seating us asked us if we wanted to wait for a booth or if we wanted to sit at the counter with Drew Carey. I thought it was a joke, but lo and behold, there was Drew Carey reading the paper enjoying a nice meal. Daniel sat 3 seats down and I was four down. It was a fun time!

Posted by Josh at 8:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have a large backlog of Movie Reviews coming down the pike. I have written most of them, but just need to go back and revisit some of them to fine tune.

Got a message from Jonathan. He is in Buenos Aires and was thinking that we should visit Argentina together sometime. I am all for it - especially if we can do either a Rio-BA-Santiago trip or BA-Antarctica cruise. Maybe 2007?

Alex called me last night to remind me about NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame remake of the 1972 seminal classic - The Poseidon Adventure. At first, I thought it was a joke, but lo and behold it is the real deal - catch it NBC Sunday at 8/7C. In doing some research, I discovered that there is a big screen remake being done by Wolfgang Petersen entitled Poseidon. It reminds me of a similar situation in 1997 when there was a TV miniseries about Titanic that aired when the movie was supposed to come out before it was delayed 6 months.

Some other interesting nuggets:
In the TV remake, it is a terrorist bomb that capsizes the boat rather than a tidal wave (it becomes a rogue wave in the movie). Oh, those wacky 2000's!

The TV remake features some of the same characters whereas the movie doesn't. Here is hoping they can convince Pamela Sue Martin, Stella Stevens, Gene Hackman, Shelly Winters, and any other living stars of the original to be extras in the big New Year's bash.

And one last disaster programming note: I still have not watched part two of Category 7: The End of the World. Part One was so chock full of cheesy goodness that I can’t wait to see more!

Posted by Josh at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I found this old photo of me on Flik's Flyers and I thought I would try and see if I can get it to post to Club Josh via Flickr. If this works - look out!

Man it is tough changing between Fliks and Flickr. Both look like typos.

Posted by Josh at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know, I know. I am late to the dance. I was bored tonight so I uploaded a set of Gorn photos to Flickr just to play around with it. I am interested in publishing books of my photos and I want to try different services and see what they have to offer. iPhoto has some cool templates, but I am not really in the mood to take all of my digicam pics over to Daniel's house and upload them.

Flickr does have a cool poster option which I might use to make Gorn posters. Also - I like the ability to create postage stamps of some pictures. However, I guess I could use Cafepress to sell stamps of some of my photos.

I really do not see myself porting the Gorn page to Flickr. It does fine just where it is. One thing that I am eyeballing it for is my trip diary photo galleries. This section is eating up a lot of bandwidth and there is no real anchor to the web site. I would like some sort of feed so that I can populate either WAP or HTML sites with photos from Flickr. Also - now I need a better cameraphone to start uploading photos.

I also know it publishes photos to MT (yay!) so maybe I just need to create a blog for the trip diaries? I really have no idea. Any one out there who can help point me in the right direction?

Posted by Josh at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think I have finally settled on a new home for Club Josh. I like the fact that the Better Business Bureau keeps tabs on web-hosting companies since there are so many out there that I have never really heard of. Also, it seems to me that any site that "evaluates" web hosting is run by one of the web hosts.

Does anyone know of a good host? I am looking to be able to host multiple domains. I don't really need a Virtual Dedicated Server nor do I want to pony up the cash it will take to run one. I found several sites that allow 5GB of storage and 8 to unlimited domains. I can't believe I am stuck with just 600MB.

At any rate, posting will be down this month as I try and minimize changes on the site so that when I port over to the new one I can use as much of the backup I made last month as possible.

Posted by Josh at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ten years ago today, one of my co-workers at UC Davis let me put a single web page up on one of our servers. It wasn't much, just a photo of me, some text about myself, and some links to some web sites that I really liked. One of the first things I added to the site was photos of the Gorn traveling the world. Within a year, the site grew to include my Movie Czar Reel Reviews, my online video catalog, Disneyland Paris photos, and my own resort island page. It is funny to look back over ten years and realize the backbone of the site was up by 1997, and since then it has been add something here and drop something there.

The early days of Club Josh were plagued by server crashes (but hey when it’s on a low-priority server, that tends to happen. November 1997, we finally moved to 2xtreme.net (are they still around?). They didn't last too long because in June of 1998 for the third anniversary, we migrated to JPS.net. June of 2000 we finally moved to clubjosh.com (of course it took several months to get the whole thing organized.

The Daily Update launched in October 2000 and personally, the fact I still do it (though not nearly as much as I like) is amazing. Then again, the fact I have had a web site for 10 years is also amazing. Wait... The fact people actually read my website is amazing.

The dark years of 2002-2004 certainly saw a major slowdown in the development of the site. I think part of it was burnout from working at Edmunds, other since working at Disney I have had less time to spend in front of a computer playing with the site. The latter half of 2004 started to see things pick up, and hopefully it will continue.

What lies ahead for the site? Well if you read yesterday's post, you will see I have some ambitious plans. Since I already have the domain name and really can't move the site, I guess I just need more control of the server - so before I go to Hong Kong in August, I will port over the site. In a way, I hope that in this tenth anniversary year I will lay the infrastructure to let Club Josh grow in the next 10 years and beyond, wherever my little brain takes me.

I'm glad you are all here and special thanks to Cooper, Joe, Susie, Robert, Dave H., Haim, Reed, Peggy, Matt, Kris, and Mom for giving me tips, technical advice, and being the beta testers whenever I needed one.

Posted by Josh at 2:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Since it is already Tuesday in Hong Kong, I have uploaded the first two pages of the redesign. The Home Page and the Club House page have been freshened up with a nice clean look. Both are very similar in style because essentially, the Club House is my idea of the home page part 2.

I think the new style is cleaner - especially compared the the almost four year old yellow. I have to admit that it will be a bit weird getting used to the new design having spent so much time with the last one. Two things pulled from the site are the contact information and the expanded what's new listings on the home page. I was getting bad at updating them. My current plan is to put all the What's New into Movable Type (OK, it is not a new plan, but one that has been around forever) and then having some sort of include on the home page which shows the latest updates.

As for the Club House, I wanted to have a photo of me on vacation, and I chose one of my favorite shots of being on vacation in Tahiti. I did have to crop it a bit to make it fit, so all you get is my lovely elbow. The Club House has never been redesigned since its launch in March 2002, and boy did it need it. There is lots more to do in that section like removing most of the photo galleries, and switching up the layout, but for now a fresh coat of paint will do.

Why did it take so long? Mainly because I was very happy with the old design, and it wasn't until recently that I felt that some sort of refresh was due. I struggled for awhile coming up with the direction and the style I wanted and there was at least three different aborted attempts. Maybe when I write the Behind the scenes of Club Josh book, I will include all the concept ideas.

What's ahead? In no particular order: New server, more travel photos, redesign of the trip diaries (some go back to 1998 era design), Splitting Charo site to its own domain, update Doingworld, re-do Jarre section (I admit this is waaaaay down on the list), port What's New into MT, depricate the mobile, HDML, and PDA sites and make a new Club Josh lite that will be accessible via PDA, Cell Phones, and any other device.

Well that is all for now, enjoy the new pages, and stay tuned for more to come! The comments section works again (you do have to register with Typepad though - its free!) so let me know what you think.

Posted by Josh at 1:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the things that I wanted to do before the launch of the redesign was to backup the existing site. After many days, I finally was able to get all 450+MB of the site backed up locally. Now I can go through and clean house.

I have two envelope backs full of notes on what to do and how to re-organize everything, but I think for the most part only the main page and the Club House page will be redesigned by next Tuesday. Other back-end stuff will probably take place in the next few weeks leading up to the eventual migration of certain parts of the site into their own little worlds.

I am thisclose to getting the Virtual Dedicated Server, but there are still some details to work out. If I had the weekend off, I would most certainly have it up and running by Tuesday, but since I will be working, I am allotting some extra time to it.

Posted by Josh at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Still working fast and furious (well at least for me) on the new layout. Of course with any redesign, scope creep is always a problem. I am trying to limit most of my work to the main page and the Club House section (which includes the Daily Update archives).

After six months, I finally figured out what was wrong with the commenting system. When I migrated to MT 3.x, I forgot to check the whole update guide to the new commenting system. There were a few key changes in the template language that I neglected to do. So it should be fine now.

One thing that is proving difficult is backing up the entire site. It is something that I used to be able to do on a T-1 at my old jobs, but cable modem is a bit slower. Also with the massive amount of photos on the site, it is a bit daunting. In the redesign, I really want to eliminate any dead files that are just filling up server space.

Posted by Josh at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm busy at work on the first redesign of the home page in over three and a half years. I am almost done with it, and hopefully it will be gracing the internet soon. The anniversary is fast approaching and I have set up a schedule so that by the time the 28th rolls around, you will start to notice a difference.

Sadly, most of my free time nowadays is in the wee hours of the morning, so if it looks goofy and full of typos, you know why.

Stay tuned!

Posted by Josh at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Gorn photos from my recent trip to New England can be found here.

My last day in Boston I had visions of going to Harvard or down to Boston Common again to see the outside of the Cheers Bar, but alas, I decided instead to sleep in and be a bump on a log. It actually turned out to be a good thing since it helped keep my system on West Coast time.

The flight back was OK, but again I vowed never to fly a 737 cross country. It is hilarious when people have to pass in the dinky aisles. I should have watched the movie, but I was too busy with the Gorn photos to pay any attention.

I am glad that I have Thursday and Friday off again as my normal days off. It will give me a chance to catch up on everything around the house.

One of the things that Nathan finally convinced me to do was sign up for a free-trial of Netflix. Honestly, I should have tried it years ago, but I really don't rent a lot of movies. Recently, my movie-going has really slowed down and there have been a lot of movies that I have wanted to see but haven't. I figure if I keep it, I will need to watch 6 movies a month for it to pay for itself. Depending on how I get through the movies I selected, I might go down to 2 movies at a time instead of the three.

Posted by Josh at 1:07 PM | Permalink

Well my four month so vacat..er..test and adjust assignment is over, and I am now focusing on the opening of our new attraction here at the park. It is always exciting to be in on the ground floor of something, and when it is very popular and has a huge impact on guests, well it is what I live for at the park.

We have had a few bumps along the way, but I think all new attractions do at some point. You can't expect everything to go 100% smoothly on the first day. OK you can hope, but just don't expect it.

I am happy now I am going to be working some more evening shifts. It will be nice to stay up late and sleep in till 11. Ahh, the good life. I will also be getting to go back to Dad's work on Fridays - so some semblance of normalcy will prevail again.

I am also looking forward to working on the ol' Club Josh again. It has been months since I have done anything. I noticed Yahoo celebrated their 10th Anniversary last week. Sheesh, Club Josh turns 10 in June. I coulda been a multi-billion dollar corporation (actually at one point I did interview with them) - then again, it wouldn't be so much fun either I suspect.

Posted by Josh at 6:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally bit the bullet and ordered a laptop. I decided that if I really wanted a laptop that I shouldn't just get what I could afford at the local Big Box outlet and be happy with that. I decided to take that price range and scour online to see if I could get something better. Sure enough I did - although it is refurbished. It is through the Dell Outlet. Some of my friends have had good luck through them so here is hoping! Once it arrives, I will go into great detail about specs et. al.

This morning I got fed up. I think it was from trying to remember some password to some online site somewhere. So this morning, I have been going through them all and deleting profiles and usernames. Some of the sites, I don't even go to anymore, and others I waste way too much time on. I think this will force me to work on my own site. Or then again, I might just regress and create all new accounts. So at least for the time being it is buh-bye to all the non-Club Josh web sites.

More technology news: GoDaddy has some really good rates for a Virtual Dedicated Server. Me thinks that I will be going that route once a) I backup Club Josh locally, and b) Get everything re-done, organized and ready-to-go. I have said it many times before, but I am really not looking forward to re-doing all the photo galleries.

Work has been really good lately. Hard to believe we are on the home stretch. For me the big test is this coming weekend. I have great confidence in my abilities, but I just hate it when someone points out something obvious within five minutes. I always feel like a dork, oh well I guess its ok to feel like what you are.

Posted by Josh at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the first time in 5 years, I have a new pair of glasses. Hard to believe, but my prescription only changed slightly and it was for the better. I think the doctor wanted my left eye to do some more work, At first, I it took some getting used to the glasses, but now I am fine. I have 30 days at Lenscrafters to take them back if I don't like them. The best part is now I have an up to date prescription, I can go shopping for a cool pair of Disney approved sunglasses. Me thinks that statement might contradict itself, but we shall see. I haven't had sunglasses since mine were scratched back at Lake Mead a few years ago. Gosh since I the summer before I started working at the park.

Other stuff going well. I had a nice relaxing weekend for the first and last time for a while. It is crunch time at the attraction as we gear up for all the final this and that and training begins in the future. I am feeling a lot of pressure, mainly because my rear is on the line since I have been working on most of the training outlines and such. On the other hand, it is a great feeling to have been able to contribute so much. I can't wait to see the fruits of my labor bear out.

One of the things that amazes me is the people who posted construction photos of the attraction. I hope legal gets down on them hard and finds out who did it. I admit before I worked at the park, I enjoyed any peak that I could get. Now that I work there, I see the other side of the coin. We are all trying so hard to give the best show for the guest when we open. When those pictures get posted, it is almost like getting caught with your pants down in the dressing room.

On a programming note, I watched the Discovery Channel show: Pompeii: Last Day. The main problem I have with most of these Discovery Events is that the show is really 75 minutes when you take out commercials and recapping and reusing footage over and over. There also wasn't anything really new revealed. I think the whole thing would have worked better as a movie rather than a narrated mess. Then for the last 40 minutes, it feels like you are watching something else as all of a sudden you are watching some lady interview Italian Volcano experts on the dangers of Vesuvius. All in all a mixed bag. To think I have been drawn in by the buildup since December - that’s what I get for believing hype.

Posted by Josh at 11:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Someone stole one of my web design and a bunch of content from the Charo page. The worst part is that the site "supposedly" belongs to Charo Entertainment. I have fired off an e-mail telling the web master that they need to take down all of the offending material - and if I can swing it, I am seriously considering legal action.

If it turns out that the site is run by Charo or people associated with her, then I might just take the whole site down. Why would I want to support and promote someone who can't even create their own web site? Heck, if they asked, I'd probably would have done their site for them.

Oh well, 10 years and finally, someone copies me. I am almost flattered.

Posted by Josh at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had an awesome time on Sunday. It was great to be back on the boat and I truly will miss it when it comes time to move over to Tomorrowland in the near future. I think I owe the good time to the fact that Kris, Andy, and Vance were all there on the boat. I am fortunate that I get three more shifts on the Columbia next week. I guess it pays to have learned the boat while it was under refurbishment - there are more people with just Twain knowledge than those who know both.

I am diving in headfirst to the Buzz project. I am in the process of developing all sorts of neat documentation as well as taking notes on all sorts of little odds and ends in the attraction. With each day that passes working on the project, I get more and more excited. I think people will be very happy with the ride.

In the midst of my Pooh shift sat night, Diane Keaton was seen running around with her kids with Pooh and Tigger in Pooh Corner. I think she was having the most fun of all.

All the work doesn't leave much playtime lately. I still have massive amounts of holiday shopping to do before next week's return to Arizona. In two days Nathan will be here!! I think he is just what the doctor ordered and since I am off on Thursday we get to hang out all night. (OK maybe not all night - he does have a plane to catch on Thurs!)

The end of the road is near on some web projects that have been in the oven for months. Of course the client had TONS of comments at the last minute, but I should be able to hammer most of them out this week. Then what? Maybe I'll get that idea in my head out into some HTML!

Posted by Josh at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to the new version of Movable Type. So far so good. The biggest change is that now if you want to post a comment you need to be registered with Typepad. Hopefully, the spammers will be gone. If not, the new version has much more powerful tools for editing the comments as well as better compatibility with Firefox. Of course where is the spell check??? You'd think that would be a no brainer.

The installation was actually quite painless too - no major hiccups at all. Now if I can just get organized and get some creative juices flowing so I can redesign!!

Posted by Josh at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Until I upgrade to MT 3.x, all forms to post comments are gone from the site. Been busy with Comment Spammers and have had over 200 in the last few weeks. Sorry guys, but thanks for all the previous comments.

Posted by Josh at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This time next week I will be on my way back to Japan! I know that I was just there in March - making this the first time I have visited a place in less than a year. (The Euro trips of the mid to late 90's managed to happen just about every year). The path to this vacation has been a long and arduous one since I bought the tickets back in August. But most of that is behind me and I am looking forward to getting back to Tokyo and Tokyo Disneyland. I'm also hoping to get to some of the sights I didn't make it to last time.

But of course, you, my loyal readers, have no idea where or what I did when I was there since I never posted my travel diary from the first trip. Also- I only posted the Gorn photos and the Tokyo Disney photos. I wish I had a laptop for the plane so I could write all of them up on the super-long plane flight.

I have mentioned before that I want to move Club Josh to a new server so I can host all of my domains. With all of the traffic the Charo site is pulling in, I just might be able to afford it (at least until the Surreal Life is done with new shows). I think I might also start the site from scratch. I would keep stuff like the update archives, the Gorn section, and the Disney park photos, but everything else is up for grabs. I still need to finish one more site for Haim before I delve into the great unknown.

Right now I am listening to the Jarre Beijing concert from the 10th of October. I am glad I didn't go due to the complications with tickets etc, however the remixes of the songs and the song selection are awesome - one of his best concerts in a while!

Posted by Josh at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Traffic this month is out of control!! Not since the Charo Sprint PCS ad aired a few years ago and when Milkandcookies.com linked to the Gorn page, have I seen such a spike.

Normally, Club Josh averages about 10,000 hits a day (yeah I know the stats on the Club House section are out of date). Our new daily record was set on Labor Day (the day after the first episode of Surreal Life aired) with almost 40,000 accesses to the server. At this rate, I will be way over the 10GB transfer allotment on my server. So what did I do? I went and added a bunch of new Charo photos to the site courtesy of RJ in New York. He was kind enough to send me a CD with over 100 photos of her concert at the Duchess County Fairgrounds. Far be it for me to miss out on a chance to update the site when people are looking.

To put it all in perspective. Club Josh used to get 8000 hits a month. To the whole site. I wish my stats went back that far. But even in October of last year the Charo section had 98,000 accesses for the month. Last month, it had 234,000. The Gorn is way down - or I should say more normal. Last October is when the infamous linking occurred on a bunch of blogs so it pulled in a record 50,000. (It currently sits around 30,000 a month). And what fills the space between Charo and the Gorn?? Disneyland Paris of course. DLP has long been one of the highest trafficked areas on the site going way back to the UCD era.

I think if traffic keeps up (and its already starting to cool off thankfully), but just in case it keeps going up and up, I might just have to pony up the cash for a dedicated server.

Posted by Josh at 3:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I finally got around to updating the captions to my Tokyo Disney Resort photos. Now all I need to do is finish those pesky Animal Kingdom ones from 2003. I'm also in the process of upgrading my four installs of gallery to version 1.4.4. I've finished the Club House and the Disneyland Paris galleries - I just have the Gorn and Trip Diaries galleries to go. So if you happen upon the site and notice the photos are all goofy, now you know why.

V 1.4.4 of Gallery offers some cool new things like the ability to integrate gallery into a php site. If only I was a good php programmer, the galleries would look neat-o.

Also - I have some new photos of the Gorn at the San Diego Wild Animal Park from last week, as well as some more photos of the Mark Twain and Columbia to post. I thought I wouldn't see the Twain for awhile, but lo and behold, I have three Twain shifts on the new schedule. Just when you think you know what scheduling is going to give you, they throw you a curve ball. So keep your eyes posted, I should have them up soon.

Posted by Josh at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As some of you might have noticed, I finally changed the main page image. Well, I wanted to post another picture of the Columbia that I took in the Gallery I have for Disneyland NO/CC pics. Well, it turns out some of my galleries are hosed and I needed to upgrade to v1.4.4 to fix it. So after some behind the scenes work, I managed to upgrade the Club House gallery. Why are the Disneyland photos there instead of in the Trip Diaries section? Mainly because I work there and it seems more of a what I do thing rather than a where I visited thing. I did link the galleries in the Trip Diaries redesign.

Let's see: the Disneyland Paris photos, the Gorn photos, and the Trip Diaries photos are all in different installs of gallery. So by the time I finish upgrading I should be good at it. Just remember to CHMOD all directories to 777 before copying the new files. Oh and make sure I re-run the new config file as well as make sure all of the php files get uploaded as ASCII not binary.

Oh and here is the pic I promised to show you:

Posted by Josh at 9:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The title refers to a video I made with Leif Peterson for a 12th grade (I think it was English Lit or something). I unearthed the video copy I have and I had forgotten two things: 1) How funny the darn thing still is; and 2) How disappointed that I don't have the master tapes. When we edited the tape together (or when I duped it) some of the best bits got spliced over. I wish somewhere out there Leif still had the videotapes (I'm pretty sure we used his camera or that he ended up with a copy of the tape that is better than mine). Of course, I think only Leif or myself can truly appreciate the video and can gleam out some of it.

Another video I digitized was from college - Mutual of Omaha's Mesoclimate Adventure. It also got the ending cut off by some TNG episode (damn I hate early 90's VCRs). The good thing is that all the fun was in the early part and is still there to see so it is not as much of a disappointment as Stonehenge is.

I tried digitizing some of the old WKJC stuff that Alex, Kris, and I did back in '88. Unfortunately the old PXL dub to an old VHS tape has not lasted well. It was almost impossible to see back in '88 when I transferred it, and now time has taken its toll and its almost pitch black. I was able to brighten it up so you can actually see it as it looked like copied from the PXL. The only real fun stuff is the one episode of Captain's Log (don't ask) that survived with the three of us trashing Mom's white couches in the front room which doubled as the bridge in the episode "Mr. Schmuck has lost his ears".

One tape that is proving elusive to find is the one that has "Beyond Earthquake", "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure", and "Chronologie".

Jeez I was a disaster movie dork back in High School. Some things never change - just the special effects get better.

Curious as to how bad these epics are? Rest assured - Windows Media and/or Real Player versions coming soon!

Posted by Josh at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday was the 9th anniversary of Club Josh. I know last year I was too sick to celebrate and this year I am busy looking ahead to next year. I have no doubts that the site will be here for its 10th birthday, but I am not sure what form it will take. Odds are it will look much the same, but I have been trying to get a good idea to restructure and redesign the site. If I go the co-location route, then Club Josh will be broken up into different domains (Charo, Doingworld, etc.) and it will make the redesign a lot easier. The sad part is that I remember posting a wish list back around the 8th anniversary of what I'd like to do.

Of those, it looks like I have accomplished one of those goals. I have partially worked on the unifying theme with the Trip Diaries experiment page. I was thinking of going with graphic headers and such but I really like the simplistic look of the kottke.org redesign as well as one of the sites he linked to. The problem with Club Josh is that it is really a bunch of different sites together. It is not just a weblog or a phlog. It is sometimes both and neither. It's tough being your own category.

Posted by Josh at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sunday I managed to pick up some extra OT on the Pooh ride. I started out at 10:30 am (after closing till 1am the night before) and ended up staying until 12 midnight. I didn't mind, but it really zapped me. Today I was a walking zombie and when I got home crashed. I am fortifying myself with Emergen-C and Echinacea to ward off any evil spirits that might have caught up with me.

Tuesday is a big day - Minnie's Moonlight Madness around Disneyland after dark. Our team is back from last year - Daniel, Tiffany, Alex, and me. We are hoping to have fun and finish higher than 54th. We are also looking to beat David's team and a few others - just for bragging rights. Hopefully we won't crash and burn too badly.

On the Club Josh front, I have almost decided to get a virtual dedicated server. It will cost 20 bucks more a month, but will allow me more flexibility with my domains as well as more than doubling the HD server space. Drawback? I will have to set up all the galleries and MT again. I think I am going to mull it over a bit longer before I make my mind up. I might just redo the entire site and one day switch it over. I just have to be careful and not pull an Edmunds and try and do it all at once.

Posted by Josh at 11:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally making some headway on the redesign of the Trip Diaries section. I did hit a roadblock when I decided to add the names and links to hotels that I have stayed at on the many trips. I have Mom and Gary on the hunt for the name of the hotels in Brugge and in Venice to make sure I have the right ones. It appears my notes in the early years are not that complete.

While I am still searching for my Europe 2002 notebook (yeah the lost Trip Diary), I did rediscover my notes from my Dome to Dome trips in 1993 and 1994. If I feel motivated I will type those up along with my Japan 2004 Diary (the photos are ready to go, just waiting the words - and the drive space). Stay tuned - hopefully I will stay focused and finish them soon.

Posted by Josh at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Man has it been warm the last few days. Nothing really exciting has been going on, mainly due to the fact that I have been worn out working out in the sun. I am now entering a stretch of 7 consecutive days of work (thanks scheduling!) before another day off. Me thinks I am going to be super pooped.

The worst part is that I have so much cleaning and organizing to do around the house as well as on the site. Some of you savvy users might have noticed that I have replaced Atomz with Google as the search engine on the site. The main reason I did it was because Atomz was limited to 500 pages indexed and my Daily Update section is way more than that alone. So hopefully the search results will be more accurate.

I was tinkering with some redesigns of the site the other day but I am stuck on a compatibility issue. I like to design for 800x600 because I know my dad's work computer and my laptop can only display that without side scrolling. The problem comes with trying to make the site look as good with all the high tech people out there with massive resolution on their monitors. I will probably stick to the same general center alignment. Club Josh turns nine in June. It would be nice to have something new - at least for the homepage which is very stale since it debuted in September 2001.

Posted by Josh at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Yesterday, I finally picked up my tickets to the Cast Member preview of the new Tower of Terror attraction that is set to open in May at DCA. It looks like the same group that went to the park in 2002 will be together again. Not sure how long Granny is going to last, but we will probably get her a wheelchair. Only Dianne, Amanda, and I are going on the actual ride, and for the rest of the day I am sure we will enjoy DCA since they have not been there except for a brief trip on Soarin'.

Oh, and I managed to post the Tokyo Disney Resort photos. No captions yet, and I am still organizing them, but for the most part they are all there. Still to come is my journal entries, the non-Disney Japan photos, and a new design for the Trip Diary section.

Man, I am still being bombarded with the latest worms and viruses. Today when I checked my email I had 30 messages - 20 of which were virus embedded. Oy!

Posted by Josh at 2:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been a tough week all around trying to get back into the swing of things. I think over the last couple of days, I am finally ready to get back to the site. Yesterday, I processed all of the Tokyo Disneyland pics and now I am working on the Tokyo DisneySea pics. After that, I will be typing up my Trip Diary and working on the Tokyo pics. It will be another massive site update. I might have to take down some of the old party pics just to make room, but only as a last resort.

Another thing to look for is a new pic on the homepage. I might just have a vote for it because I am not sure if I should put a classic pic or one from Tokyo.

I also don't know what is up with my email. I am getting tons of viruses each day now. It might be time to abandon the old josh email address for a new one that isn't posted so that I don't have to wade through the mountains of spam I get.

Posted by Josh at 2:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing like a rainy weekend in LA to set the world on its ear. You see everyone here has forgotten what it is like to drive in the rain. As a result, they all drive the same speed and get in some spectacular accidents. Here at the apartment complex, a lake forms around my parking spot so that I need to jump or walk the long way around in order to get from the car to the apartment. At work, it wasn't raining hard enough to make the ride stop, just enough to get everyone cold and wet. This is alarming to me because with the secret trip coming up in three weeks, the last thing I want to do is get sick. I have started on the Echinacea and vitamins and will soon add the Vitamin C/Zinc combo to my regiment so that I can avoid anything. I'm also trying to get to bed earlier. (Not really working tonight though...)

One bright spot this weekend was today when I was at Load, I got to escort Cal Ripken onto the ride. Pretty cool - it was nice to have a group that was organized and not prone to breaking the ride down. I also got to see Lev and family at the park today. It was the first time I had seen the newest addition to the family. I certainly wish we all got a chance to get together more often.

One more Gorn note - according to the Gallery program, there are currently 399 Gorn photos on the site!! (actually 404 since there are 5 in the AV Day 2003 Gallery I haven't copied over yet...)

Posted by Josh at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

All of the Gorn Photos are now in the Gallery program. It was so easy to do now that I am not concerned with having a unique identifier on each page. I did archive all of the old HTML files just in case I need to refer to them at a later date. I think they look so much better with the bigger thumbnails that part of me wants to go and remaster some of the older photos to a bigger size. Oh well. I did have to re-do the Walt Disney World 2000 photos because they were just linking to the photos in the Trip Diaries section to save space. This will make posting Gorn photos that much quicker and easier.

I am now wondering what to do with the Trip Diaries site. I need to redesign and move photos around over there, but it is such a huge undertaking. What is worse, I have an idea for it, but something about it just isn't right. I have a weird way of designing web pages. I tinker and tinker, then put it away, then tinker some more, and then eventually it goes on the site. There is the rare occasion where I will get an idea and hammer it out in a day, but the last time that happened was in with the redesign of the home page. Speaking of which, mine is beginning to look retro-cool since it has been on the site for almost 2.5 years. I'd re-do it, but I like it so much. I have some gurgles in the back of my mind on where I'd like to see it go.

One of the consequences of all the changes is that you might find an old link somewhere that won't work. Let me know if you find any!