Movie: Signs
I just finished watching Signs, by M. Night Shyamalan. That is one of, if not THE worst movie I've ever seen. It tops that dusty evil car movie that Andrew and I watched in college where the driver is never shown and in the end it drives off a cliff onto a pile of dynamite. I mean, the aliens were terrible looking. Some gangly green humanoid thing with big claws, huge fangs and teeth. Give me a break. And the plot was moronic. Aliens decide to travel across time and space to take over our planet for it's natural resources. And they do this with hand to hand combat!?!? And WATER KILLS THEM? What in the hell! That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. They have the technology to travel across the galaxy but can't wipe us out with radiation or a virus or bullets or something more advanced than hand to hand combat? And they picked a planet to harvest whose surface is comprised mostly of a substance that kills them? Did they not see that it rains the stuff from the sky? Good lord.
And the main character, a preacher, has tossed away his faith after his wife is killed by a car. With a horrible scene of her dying, pinned between the car and the tree. And if the car moves, she'll die, yet she's totally able to have a conversation laid out on the hood...'somehow' held together. SO LAME. And in the end, when it's out in the open that aliens exist, bam, he's a preacher again.
Did he do any research before developing this story? Did he watch any
other SCI-FI movies? Did he even hire consult a technical writer?? I
have to imagine that Mr. Shyamalan is just as much of a moron as he
thinks his viewers are.
The thing that gets me is that I loved Unbreakable It was great. And although I didn't like it, the Sixth Sense was very successful.
Please, don't waste your life by watching this movie. Wow.
Nuclear WHAT injections?
So my feet have been hurting more and more lately. Both of them. I can
barely stand for more than 10 min at a time. And it is starting to hurt
to drive a clutch. No effin clue why. My pediatrist thinks it's complex
regional pain
syndrome.
So, he sent me off for a "bone scan". Whatever that is.
See that big scary machine? The one they put 'terminally ill' patients in on shows like ER? It's what's generally referred to as a Nuclear Imaging machine. Basicly a $250k, computer controlled, nuclear camera. That's what they use to watch the isotopes flow thru your bloodstream. Isotopes? What bloodstream, mine? Needles? Again? Jeez. I had this done to check for blood clots in my chest after my accident. One of the most painful trips across a hospital I've ever made. Second only to the trip to the X-Ray with the careless gurney cart driver. I swear to god I shit my pants. Wait, I wasn't wearing pants.
Anyway, this is how it goes:
11AM: Technetium Isotope injection and simultaneous flow scan.
3PM: Return for 2 more images of calcium activity in my feet.
24 hrs later: Piss out the last of the radiation in my urine.
Not too bad. I will post images of the results soon.
mp3 ghost town
Stopped by the old MP3.com campus today on the way back from the doc's office. The first 3 years I lived in SD were spent in those buildings. But today, that place is a ghost town. It looks just like the day I left it actually, even the front desk has forms to sign in. But it's totally empty. Kinda freaky. Reminds me of late night sysadmin work. Server's down, I'm on call, burning up the backroads at 3am in the RX-7, screetching into the parking lot sideways. Good times. Looks like the parking lot was paved recently. They removed all traces of that screwup "YEILD" sign. The bottom floor of the engineering building is the only thing that looks changed, it's totally empty. Bldg 2 lobby looks exactly the same, I was almost waiting for Sonny to walk up and let me in.
I hung out with some old friends this weekend that I haven't really seen since the MP3 days (1.5 yrs?), reminded me of that place and the way things used to be. It was such a cool working environment, so many really smart, hard working people...too bad it was mis-managed, cut into bits and sold away. It still kinda irks me the way things went down for me in the end, but I walked away reasonably unscathed, and now I get to bask in the glow of working for a successful, well managed company. Compared to a continuous slide underwater 50 fold deep. I got to MP3 after the 'boom', my first day was the day we got sued, so I did nothing but watch my 'optionaire' status plummet into the depths. ESPP and watching stocks was so bogus back then. Now, I am all over it. Got the E-Trade action goin. Even wrote a new department IRC bot that queries stocks, just like Jane.
Lots of fond memories at EastGate Mall Rd. Still...I shoulda done a burnout in the middle of the front sidewalk.
ringaling ding
This
is a pic of the gear on the wall at my Dr's office. My ears have been
ringing, kinda loudly, so I came in for a checkup. Did an audio test...I
can hear fine. No infections or anything. Nothing out of the ordinary
for me. Funky. Maybe I'm finally just picking up all the high frequency
EM that is radiating throughout our little planet's atmosphere. I don't
think that it has anything to do with the loud cars at Monterey because
I didn't have that problem until I woke up last week. Maybe I'm just
imagining things.
Monterey 2004
So, Monterey was a blast. Karl had some last minute problems with the
MGA(egyptian
scroll seals) so we eneded up with 2 mighty
steeds:
Nathan & Arne in my RX-8, Karl in the 72 BMW
2002.
The trip up was mostly uneventful, hit a bit more traffic than last
year, or at least more than I remember last year. Traffic in LA, traffic
in Santa Barbara, traffic in Monterey. Thursday night, we stayed in San
Simeon, which you may recognize from
Hearst Castle fame. This year we opted
for the Motel 6 but it was pretty clear (after the sink bubbled up some
charred rubble) that we should have found the place we were in last year
and payed a few $ more. We had dinner that night at the same place as
last year, and it was most
enjoyable.
But this year we had a big seagul that was hopping from table to table
and off the umbrella's. I wanted to shoot that thing. We also make a
stop by Target that night to pick up some shorts and deoderant for Arne
and a belt for Karl...and I picked up a razor scooter. Thought it might
be good for getting around with less footwork. Or at least that's the
excuse I used.
Continuing from San Simeon up to the Concorso, we stayed on the coast for the most excellent twisty's just south of Monterey. That was really the first time I had put the RX-8 thru the paces on the twisty's, so having Karl in the 30 year old BMW was probably a good thing. Especially since I had 200 lb of german meat in the passenger seat and another probably 200lb of gear in the trunk. It made the car handle and respond a little different from my daily commute.
Arriving at the Concorso, we hit an hour and a half of traffic waiting to park. So gay. And then I was forced to park my new sports car in a giant bumpy, dusty, field. It wasn't mowed very well either so my hot exhaust sat against some light brush until I noticed and moved it. A guy in a GT3 broke his expensive car driving thru that. I bet a lot of people will be pissed over that situation. Probably not the dude in the giant smurf-colored SUV with 26" DUBS that parked next to me.
The show was good, lots and lots of Ferrari's. I took a lot of pics this year...compared to last year...I bumped my head so hard on that Lancia that I was just out of it the rest of the trip. This time, I saw rad cars of all types. Saleen S7, McLaren F1, Ferrari 250GT Coupe, Alfa Romeo GTV, Ferrari F-40, Ferrari Enzo, Ford GT40, and my favorite car of the show, an early Abarth Coupe. It was a good show, but after all the traffic and paying friggin $100, I am not sure I will go next year. The one bonus...after the show, we got lost trying to find a shortcut out and ran across a parked Porsche Carerra GT. Arne went nuts and we jumped out to check it out. Just a few seconds later the 'prick on the inside' typical owner pulled up and drove it away. But not before rolling like 2 car lengths back, nearly hitting me, revving to the moon and jetting away. Turns out it was the owner of Monster Cable.
We promptly made our way to Laguna Seca Raceway and set up our tents near the top of the corkscrew. Not nearly as windy as the last two years, yaaay. 2003 was almost unbearable due to the high winds. We ran into some friends from years past, Mike McConnell and Mario and his gang of gear-head geeks from San Diego. Our gang of gear-head geeks needs to hook up with them for a big motorsports party. We met up with Soma and Kaushik as well, who had come up for the races, and they went out to dinner with us. Venturing into downtown Carmel, we had nice food and tried to figure out each other's riddles. We ran into some interesting cars parked outside while we were there. 3 black cars none of us had ever seen before...'Spyker' was the make and the model was R8 I believe. They had a very interesting shift mechanism...it was totally exposed. Slept very nice on the air-bed that night.
Got up early the next day and saw some excellent racing and spent quite
a bit of time in the paddock
area.
Watched the F1 cars getting ready, that was neat. One of the Italian
guys yelled at me to get out of the way. It was kinda neato. Got busted
almost instanly on the razor scooter. Not allowed. Whatever. It's cool,
razor scooters are lame anyway. ;) Checked out quite a number of vendors
as well. I got to sit in the Noble
M12.
Arne and I ran into the former president of VUNet USA while we were
there, small world. He was taking the same
picture
I was. He seemed happy to see us and was interested to know where we
were working now. At the end of the race day, as we were packing up our
chairs to head back to camp, I heard this odd loping idle
sound
coming down the corkscrew. It could have only been a rotary. It was the
Mazda 787B, the only Japanese car to ever win Le Mans. And 6 other
rotary race cars. RAD! I guess they lined up for some shots or
something. I got so excited that I forgot my camera. Dammit! But that's
ok, Arne took pics for
me.
That night, we decided to go out for fast food. But we made a pit stop
to help Kaushik thru his first tire change on the Suburban. We ran out
to Salinas to get the food, brought it back and watched race
videos
with Mike. Kaushik, Soma and Mike's neighbors with a
Mini
joined us. Saw some neato vintage videos (Moss, Gurney, etc) that Mike
had converted from 8mm to VHS. That was pretty bitchin. The weather was
nice and I slept like a baby again. Karl actually got Carbon Monoxide
poisoning from the generator of the huge ass RV next to us. His lips
were numb the next morning!
Sunday morning was a treat...Arne and I milled around the Paddock some more, saw the new Ferarri 612, the new Mazerati and the biggest truck I've ever seen. Just before lunch we headed back to camp, packced up the tents and sat up the chairs on the opposite side of the track near turn 2. This spot has a pretty bitchin view of the track and is perfect for the vintage F1 race. But before that, they brought out the 2003 Ferrari F1 car, driven by the actual Ferrari test driver. It was so cool to see all those F1 cars zipping around Laguna Seca. He tried to set the all-time lap record, but was a full 3 seconds slower (106 sec - 133mph avg) than the Honda Champ car that holds the title. But it was cool watching him try! They were all driving pretty damn hard too...sparks were flying! During the lunch intermission, they brought out some new supercar from Chrysler...followed by the Rotaries again!!! This time, they actually were doing laps on the track. Some sort of "Mazda Heritage" lap. I couldn't have asked for more. Well, except that since they let the VP of Mazda USA drive the 787B, it was a pretty tame race. I would have loved to hear those race rotaries at full tilt.
We finished up the day with a shower and a nice, long trip home. We encountered some sucky ass traffic in Santa Barbara, just like the last 2 years, but other than that it was pretty uneventful. The RX-8 was a great car for this trip, if we'd just had a little less gear, I'd say it would have been perfect. The seats are comfortable and it actually got 21mpg average, even with all that twisty climbing and horse play. The BMW 2002 ran great on the trip as well, but suffered a rear-end failure a few days later. Sorry Karl, that's a big bummer.
I say this every year, but I may not do Concorso next year. The Historics, on the other hand, have been established as good solid fun and a tradition that I definatly want to keep.
Linuxworld + Mom
Linuxworld was pretty damn cool. Dan, Will and I met at Dan's house about 5:15am, unpacked and repacked a bunch of kiteboarding gear (for Dan and Will), drove to the airport, flew to Oakland, got a renta-car (4 door Grand Am), mashed the gear in it, checked into the hotel, dropped off bags and hit up the vendors at the Moscone convention center around 9:30. We got lots of schwag and learned a few things. It's amazing how they market to us geeks...using models to promote products. Seems to work, I'm not sure what Pogo Linux sells, but I must buy lots of it and install it everywhere. Novell, Redhat and Sun had the biggest displays, and Mozilla had the coolest shirts. Too bad they cost money. It kind of dissapoints me that LinuxWorld has gone all corporate, but it really does show how much the Linux scene has changed in the last few years. Now it has marketing. ;)
After the convention, we cut out early and went to Chrissy Field. Dan and Will had brought a bunch of kiteboarding equipment with the hopes of kiting in the extreme wind that is generated when a light gale is squeezed between the hills on either side of the Golden Gate. But they both wimped out at a measly 28mph gale. I give them crap but I wouldn't have touched that water with anything less than a Navy frigate. It was overcast, cold, so windy that the sand was blasting my eyes out and the tide was moving out really fast. We booked to a new spot at 3rd Ave, and while I slept, they drove to where they were supposed to go, which turned out to actually be 3rd Street. Dan got out in the water while Will and I watched. Took some cool pics. It was pretty neat to watch those kites flying around. We wrapped up the trip with a cruise around the bay on a small cruise ship. A lot like a Hornblower boat, just not that company. We almost didn't make it...boarding started at 5pm and it was supposed to leave at 6pm. We left the kiting scene at with 15 minutes till 6 and the pedal to the floor. 30 minutes later we found parking a block or two away from the dock and sprinted the whole distance, Will and I both tried to run but ended up hobbling (bad knees). Dan called ahead to another co-worker, Mike, and had him help us delay the boat. When we got there, security was waving us in, waiting to close the gate! I still can't believe we made it. We instantly grabbed drinks to celebrate making it in the nick of time. It turned our to be one of the most picturesque things I've ever done...and all 3 of us forgot out camera's. Dammit! But the pic above was one of the pics I took with my cell phone. And these too:
That night we went out drinking down the street from our hotel. Beer and geeky stuff were the main course, martini's for dessert. Probably the most I've had to drink in a long time. And that damn band never did play the song we requested. Bastards.
Getting up to a highly groggy morning, we left for the airport Thursday around 8am and got back into SD about 2pm that day. I was so dead at work. And it reminds me whey I hate flying. I still can't believe that Southwest was that crowded during the week.
Thursday night, I ventured back down to the Southwest terminal to pick up my mom who flew in from TN. She came out for an end-of-summer long weekend. I'm glad that she loves my new house. Friday, I had to work but she and Tracy went shopping. David drove down late that night. The next morning, Mom, David and I went down to Coronado beach. One of the top 10 beaches in the US. It was so beautiful, with the huge, white, flat sandy beaches and the gold sand glittering in the waves. It's just south of the North Island Naval Base/Airport, so we got to see a few jets landing as well, which was deafening, but really cool. We had some lunch and came home, exhausted. That night, we hung out at home and watched a movie. Sunday, we went and did a little shopping, Mom bought me a housewarming gift: Black and Decker Leaf Hog. It's pretty sweet. I can't wait to use it. David and I chopped down the rest of that damn tree in the back yard as well. No more trees around the pool, yay.
David left about 5pm on Sunday and I dropped Mom off before work at the Airport. I leave Thursday morning for Monterey and the historic races. Damn, this has been a busy summer.
Busy busy busy lately
Been a while since I've written anything. Sorry for no updates, I've been too busy with 'real life' to sit down and update this sucker.
So, I moved. Yes, I now live in a house. No more stinkin apartment. In fact, today I moved the last item. It's taken us about 3 weeks to get settled. We moved in the week of July 4th...it was hectic and hard. I actually got some sort of blood blisters on my poor feet from standing up too much or something. I need to see a pediatrist. David came down to help and we did a bunch of home improvement projects that first day. Swapped up backwards blinds, fixed the garage lights, trimmed all the trees (except the huge Ficus) and a variety of other tasks. We moved most of our stuff that weekend but then immediatly headed out of town to Ohio for a week. The pic to the right was in the airport in Atlanta, waiting to get on our flight to go back to San Diego. It was crowded, and right during the busiest season of the year. Still not too bad tho.
The trip east was fun. Back to see Tracy's college friend get married. The wedding was nice, very traditional, I met some cool people and had a good time. Tracy's dad lives near Smuckers. That's neat. We hung out at Tracy's brother Andy's house a lot, and after the wedding and all that was over, we went up the last day to Cedar Point. Man, that was fun. I really had never been on any coasters like that. So fun, I want to go back and ride the 2 big ones that I missed out on for 'maintenance' reasons. We heard from Tracy's dad that the reason the Top Thrill Dragster was down was because some cable snapped and shot thousands of tiny bits of steel into the foreheads of the front row passengers. Yikes. 120mph and 420 feet, I guess there is a lot of physics involved there. Heh. I actually got a little sick after all the upside down stuff and had to sit out the last coaster. I even got a little queasy on the plane ride home. Hehe.
So after we got back, we immediately started unpacking and fixing up our place. I have done a few more HI projects, including trimming the huge Ficus and installing a water line to the fridge. Tricked out my toilet. Twice. Bought some cool powertoolstoo. Power! Muahaha!
Tracy's Dad is in town this week. He bought us a new grill last night. That thing is bad ass. I am so excited to cook on it!
I go to LinuxWorld next week and my mom comes in the day I get back for the weekend. That next week I go to Monterey for the historic races. Busy busy busy.
walking in sorrento valley
Decided to walk back between buildings after a meeting. A nice day
outside, glad I did it. Sorrento Valley is laced with pockets of
'wilderness'. I did a geo-cache hunt a few years ago in the area under
the I-805 Mira Mesa off-ramp. Neat place, lots of trees and birds and
snakes etc. Should do this more often, I think. ;-)
Birthday Suprize
Yesterday was my 27th birthday. Tracy has been conspiring for a few weeks on a neat birthday for me. I tried not to guess it like last year...but I wasn't even close this time.
She got me up at 7:30 am to hit the road north in the Civic. No idea where we were headed, but I was starting to think she was gonna try to push me out of a plane. After an hour or so, I got a sneaking suspicion that David had some involvement...since Tracy had some secret e-mail thing going and I figured that it was probably with a family member. But she was still not telling me what we were doing. Until we got lost. Finally she spilled the street address to me to help out with the directions. Getty Drive. Well, I think I know where we're going now. Cool! Tracy had set it up so David and Anne would meet us at the Getty, then we'd head to Malibu for some hiking, head downtown for some Dinner and then finally back to David's for cake. How cool! I haven't seen my brother in a long time! So the Getty is the bomb. I took lots of pics. It's such a pretty place. While explaining to Anne some gemoetric math type stuff, David got busted by a guard for touching a 600 year old ceramic tile arrangement. To which he responded under his breath "it was worth it." Hehe. We saw dozens of HUGE extremely old paintings, most of which were painted back in the 1600's. My feet were killing me after a few hours so we went out to the gardens and relaxed for a while and took some more neat pictures. I sat on the damp grass and contracted a mild case of 'swamp ass' for the rest of the afternoon. Then we looked at some more sculpture, had some lunch and decided it was time to go. I highly recommend going to the Getty if you haven't been.
So then we drove North up the 101 to Malibu Creek State Park, a 4000 acre park west of L.A. It's where MAS*H was filmed, so it "looks like Korea". Except we turned on Malibu Road or something like that and ended up just south of where we needed to be, but still at what we thought was the park. Signs pointed us to a place to park the car and hike so we tried it out anyhow. It was deserted and kinda scary. One of the first things muttered on the trail was "we're gonna die out here", followed by the discovery of a building with no windows, a 15 foot wall around the permiter, razor wire and another chain link fence around the whole thing. It could be nothing other than a high security prison filled with raving lunatics. At one point, we were hiking along merrily and all of a sudden a horse comes trotting up behind us and nearly ran over Tracy and Anne. Anne petted it for a bit and then it farted when it walked away. After a while, we just turned around, the trail didn't seem to go anywhere. We made it out alive. I think a few chiggers hitchiked out on my leg tho.
Since it was too late to get dinner downtown, we decided to eat closer, sooner. The drive down the coast was beautiful...the sun was setting, it had turned out to be a very nice day, despite the June Gloom. We had excellent meals at a little Italian place in Malibu that David picked out on-the-fly. The food, service and atmosphere were all great.
After dinner, we headed back to David's for cake and hang time. David and Anne played piano and cello for us, while Tracy took pics of me opening my birthday presents. Mom called right as we were lighting the cake, and she got to sing along and hear me blow out the candles.
The drive back to SD wasn't bad either, mostly because we left at 11:30pm on a Friday night.
All in all, it was a great day. Now, I need to start thinking up something equally cool for Tracy next year. :)
moving sucks
So I have spent the last few days sweating about my move. I have so much to do!
- pack
- transfer phone services
- transfer DSL line
- get TV service (DirecTV?)
- turn on water
- fwd mail
- hire movers
- hire cleaners
- steam carpet
- buy lawnmower
- buy fridge
- turn on electricity
- get more boxes
- die of exhaustion
But this hasn't been a bad week. Just really busy. I had some nice lunches outside. Alehandro's and Tech Center were nice.
And saw some wacky stuff. Check out the Civic parked on top of the vette! Ouch! Apparently they were both parked on Barnes Canyon (good idea) and someone was speeding, swerved to avoid and hit the civic head on. And then sped off. Ouch.
Went to Will's on Wed. night to watch the Padre's game and ended up going out to the Saloon in Encinitas. Played some pool, made fun of the tools at the bar and bitched about work. And drank good Scotch. Lots of it. It was a good time.
Funny links of the week: