Cap'n John's Blog

Saturday, January 29, 2005, 07:50 p.m.

Another letter to The L.A.Times

According to his byline, Jim Arnold is a writer somewhere in Northern California. If you've signed up on the L.A. Times website you'll be able to read his article here. If not, a brief summary of Jim's article is that he is a little ticked off by people replying to his Thank You with No Problem. I've written the following letter to the Times, but it might not get published. We'll see what happens in the next few days ;)

Here's the letter
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What a pity Jim Arnold ("'Thanks' Deserves a Better Response," Voices: January 29, 2005) did not do a little more research before writing his article. Had he done so I'm sure he would have discovered that the phrase which seems to annoy him is a shortened version of the distinctly Australian phrase "Not a Problem". (As an Australian-American, it amuses me to see America influenced by another country for a change.) Had Jim done a little more research he would have also run across the espanol response to Gracias, being De Nada or It's Nothing. While You're Welcome might be the traditional response to Thank You, it is obviously understood by both Australians and espanol speakers that helping a customer, or anyone else for that matter, is neither an inconvenience, nor a problem.

Jim, I know you're probably reading this and wanting to thank me for enlightening you and informing you about other countries' cultures, so I'd just like to say, it was not a problem.

Cheers, mate.

Yes, I am a smart-arse, and yes, I do enjoy pissing people off, especially when they're already pissed off to start with. As I mentioned in my letter, it also amuses me that America, the country which so heavily influences and changes other countries cultures, has also been influenced by another country, my own in particular, which makes it all the more amusing :D

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Friday, January 28, 2005, 09:15 a.m.

HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

This arrived in my inbox and just amused me no end.

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Wednesday, January 26, 2005, 07:16 p.m.

Firsts & Lasts

FIRSTS
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First job: Paperboy, then Gardener (self-employed)
First screen name: Wibble.
First piercing/tattoo: No piercings or tattoos at this point in time, not even any private ones ;)
First enemy: Some kid in 6th Grade, can't remember his name.
First big trip: Our family took Road Trips all the time. Can't remember what the first one was.
First concert: Alice Cooper Trashes The World.
First musician/song you remember hearing in your house: I have no idea.
First underground band you got into and there was no looking back: What's an underground band?

LASTS
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Last big car ride: Probably to Carmel last year, 350 miles. Actually, from Carmel back home was more recent ;)
Last kiss: About 20 minutes ago, check that, five seconds ago. Well, if you were reading this as I wrote it, it was five seconds ago...now I have to kiss her again ;)
Last library book: The Empty Chair, by Jeffery Deaver.
Last movie seen in theater: I can't remember...I shudder to think that it was Brother Bear...surely I saw something more recent than that.
Last phone call: that I made - this morning, work related; that I got - also this morning, also work related.
Last CD played: Bush's Sixteen Stone.
Last soda drank: Barq's Rootbeer.
Last ice cream eaten: Haagen Dazs' Vanilla & Milk Chocolate Ice Cream Bar.
Last website visited: The Haagen Dazs website ;)

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Monday, January 24, 2005, 07:16 p.m.

What a Doll! ;)

Totally gacked from Liz, this would be me...as a Doll...in drag :D
I was making the best of what I had to work with, ok!
They didn't have any stuff (other than hair) for guy dolls...they didn't even have a guy doll :P
At least I got a shirt with my initials on it ;)

You can make a Doll of you too, by heading on over to eLouai's Candybar Doll Maker.

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Sunday, January 23, 2005, 09:52 p.m.

I got the Flues

Oh yeah, I got those Sunday morning flue.

Saturday night I knew I was coming down with something. I popped a couple of Nyquil and played Solitaire Showndown with Liz, until my eyes couldn't hack it any more. Liz won this time around. We play first to 500 points, although a recent game had me first to 500, but Liz won the hand, also broke 500 and finished with a higher score than me, so she claimed she won. I told her last night's victory also didn't count because I was sick, and she was taking advantage of an invalid with diminished mental capacity. She didn't buy it :P

Afterwards I went to bed sweating like a pig (which is technically incorrect because pigs can't sweat, they have no sweat glands) and was burning up for most of the night, then in the wee hours of the early morning I went from boiling to freezing...freezing like a pig...nah, that still doesn't make sense :P

I even stole the second little comforter Liz had on, which was just enough to stop me from freezing but didn't really warm me anyway. Then around 5:30 I woke up and knew it was time to drive the great white porcelain bus, and drive it I did, while calling for my good friends Ralph and Huey.

After locating Ralph & Huey I felt better, sort of, although my neck and shoulders were killing me and I was still cold. So I jumped under a steaming hot shower which warmed me up and felt oh so good on my aching neck and shoulders. I crawled back into bed for all of an hour, and then was sweating again.

As I've had "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" for a good week or so (from Netflix), and Liz didn't want to watch it with me, I decided to get up, make myself a cup of hot, sweet tea, and watch Mel's Vietnam epic.

I enjoyed it, although I got something in my eye a couple of times during the movie...must have been some gnats flying around the family room, although I never saw any, but every now and then one of them would fly into my eye and have me tearing up, and usually at some sad part of the movie too. Amber woke up midway through the movie (which is practically one huge battle) and so Liz ended up getting up and watching the last half of the movie with me. I noticed those pesky gnats must have been flying into her eyes too coz she also got a little teary, especially when Mel's character's wife began personally delivering the KIA telegrams to the wives in the neighborhood.

After the movie finished Liz asked me to make her breakfast, but she crawled back into bed and was asleep when I brought it up to her. She woke up, ate, and promptly went back to sleep again.

I busied myself playing PC games while Amber kicked back on the sofa watching music videos on MTV. We discovered she loves music videos, doesn't matter what kind, she loves it all and will lie contentedly on the sofa for hours at a time. Sure, propping the baby in front of the TV might not be your idea of good parenting, but there's only so much you can do to entertain a 3-month old baby before you yourself grow bored, so MTV it is :)

Liz's parents dropped JE back home early in the afternoon and we eventually made it out for dinner to a little fast food Chinese restaurant, which not only does pretty good fast food but also does an awesome breakfast. If you ever get the chance to have an authentic Chinese breakfast, get yourself a couple of strips of Yo-Tao (not sure if that's how it's spelt, but that's how you pronounce it, or at least how I pronounce it ;) and a bowl of hot soy milk. Now the Yo-Tao has to be fresh out of the frier because it gets greasier as it cools, but while it's still hot you don't seem to notice the grease. It's nothing more than a long strip of deep-fried dough and you tear a chunk off the end, dip it in the hot soy milk and gobble it down, and before you know it, you've scarfed down four of these things and two bowls of soy milk, and you're stuffed :)

That was our breakfast almost every morning we were in Shanghai.

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Saturday, January 22, 2005, 06:39 p.m.

Cheap Lawn Mowers, and the Dastardly Dept. of Social Security

Friday morning arrived and because JE stayed at the in-laws on Thursday night I was able to sleep in on my day off (unlike this morning when he woke me at 6:30 to tell me it wasn't 7am yet). Of course I had to have an allergy attack Friday morning which prevented me from enjoying a sleep in. I also forgot that I'd promised Drew we'd play golf that day, so I'd double booked myself with a trip to the hardware store to pick up an electric lawn mower. My favorite hardware store's website listed the desited mower at $ 200, but their competition had the same mower at $ 180. I called my fave store and found out they price match with an additional 10% off. Despite their competition being just a couple of miles from home, I drove the 12 miles to my closest fave store, located the mower (and the required 15amp Power Cord), and carted it to the check-out at the Customer Service Desk. There I produced the print out from their competition's website showing the $ 20 price discrepancy. The girl called their competition. And found out their competition's physical store sells the mower for $ 200; the $ 180 price is their online price. The girl then started to show signs of not being willing to match their competitor's online price. I got a little vocal (not a lot, just a little) and the girl turned to the CSR next to her and showed him the print out, he then gave her the OK to reduce the price of their mower. The mower was originally $ 200, and as well as the mower I needed to buy a $ 20 50-foot, heavy-duty, extension cord. With the price match, and additional 10% (which I suspect was meant to be 10% of the price difference, not an additional 10% off again), the total bill came in under $ 200, including sales tax. "Awesome!" I said, as I pushed my bloody cheap mower out of the store.

Arriving back home it was time to do battle with DSS, as we needed to get Amber's (that's our daughter, not any of the large number of Heavenly Creature bloggers named Amber ;) Social Security number. We arrived at the local office...eventually...they're kind of hard to find without doing some back tracking...to be told that we had insufficient proof of A's identity. It appeared from talking with the first girl that we needed a healthcare card or birth certificate. We produced A's immunization record from her doctor. Not good enough, said the DSS girl, so off we went to the local registrar's office where we acquired a copy of A's birth certificate, which we'll need anyway for her passport, plus those things come in real handy anyway. We returned to the office and this time met with a DSS guy, who told us the birth certificate was not good enough, we also needed a healthcare card with not just A's name on it, but her date-of-birth and either Liz or my name. Home we went, where we located A's healthcare card...which does not have her DOB or our name, not on the same card, in fact none of our healthcare cards have our DOB on them. Does anyone's card from their healthcare provider have their DOB on it? I called the DSS and after being on hold for close to 15 minutes finally spoke to another DSS guy who said his healthcare card does not have his DOB on it, and that he wasn't aware why my local office were asking for a card with all of that information. I returned to the office once more, ready for war. Liz stayed behind with A. who by now needed feeding. I entered the DSS office and was greeted by the guard who asked if I had everything this time. I just shook my head at him. "I don't know," I said, "We'll soon find out."

Same DSS guy again. I produced Amber's healthcare card, sans DOB, which of course he noticed, and brought up. I told him none of our healthcare cards have a DOB on them. I explained that I'd called the DSS and even their own guy's card doesn't have a DOB on it. I think the problem is we're making too much money, and we have better health insurance than the average poor Joe Schmoe who lives in our neighborhood and flips burgers for a living, and Mr. Schmoe's healthcare card does has his DOB on it, as well as his kids, so the DSS lumps everyone into the same category and was holding us to the same low standards which we could have met if we'd flipped burgers for a living, but I've done that before, and you can't make a living from it, so we pulled ourselves up past the poverty line and well, now we're the poor middle-class folk who get discriminated against because we have too much money. Ok, I'm rambling here now. Back to the story.

The DSS guy said he needed proof that Amber existed. I asked him if I needed to bring my daughter back in. He said that wasn't sufficient. I was stunned. Apparently even with Amber right in front of him, if we didn't have the required documents the DSS would not acknowledge her existence. I spread all of the documents I had out over the counter, and I had a lot of documents there. Just as I was telling him that I'd like to speak to a manager or supervisor his eyes lit on the Hospital's Discharge papers. Apparently they prove she exists. It's not enough that she was born. She also needed to have been discharged from the hospital.

When I got back home with A's social security number Liz couldn't believe that the DSS guy had accepted the Discharge Papers, mainly on account of the fact that we'd had those Discharge Papers all along. If we'd only tossed everything on the counter the first time maybe we could have avoided several trips to the DSS office that day.

Finally I got home and was able to mellow out by mowing my lawn, which took all of 5 minutes ;) but hey, I did a much better job than the gardeners ever did, and who stopped by this week too. Good thing I had a padlock on our gate so they couldn't get into our yard. I saw a bunch of cut branches in the dumpster, so several of my neighbors must be missing trees this week now too. I noticed my tree that they cut down last time has a small shoot off to one side, so it's not dead, and I'm hopeful it can return to its former glory. A couple of the tomatoe cuttings and white rose clippings I jammed into the garden are also blooming (or budding at least, no flowers, just leaves) while at least one of the grape seeds I planted on a whim has also sprouted. Awesome! :)

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Tuesday, January 18, 2005, 11:42 a.m.

dreaming in color

Who says we don't dream in color? Does anyone believe that anymore? Of course we dream in color. If we're not color-blind, we must dream in color. I dreamed in color last night, although I think it was actually this morning coz I woke up around 4am and the dream was still relatively fresh in my mind. The dream was another one of those where I am with the last group of humans fighting against invading aliens/demons/vampires, etc. In this one the world was not as devestated as it has been in some of my dreams, and I was crouched on a garage roof watching a young lady paint a mural along the front path of a house. The mural resembled aboriginal art, in that it was comprised of a long, ubroken wavy line, but with dots and dashes painted both above & below the wavy line. I suspected, and verified later when I spoke to her, that the young lady was writing a message in Morse Code. I also know that she was using yellow paint for the dots and dashes, because sometimes she would go over a dot a couple of times, and as she sloshed more paint down the dot became a more and more vivid yellow.

I think the dream was a throw back to several events from the weekend.

* I started reading a book Xinh loaned us, Robin McKinley's "Sunshine". The setting is kind of like in the Anita Blake novels, although the humans have nowhere near the tolerance for the undead in McKinley's novel as they do in Anita's world. This is a difficult book to read as McKinley has two very distinct styles of writing. One is very easy to read, the words flow smoothy from her pen and pages just fly by, yet at other times there are a lot of very convoluted sentences which really bog things down. I had a lot of trouble getting into the book on account of this, but before I knew it I was 40 pages in. I am enjoying it, but sometimes it seems a chore, and I wonder whether it's really worth the effort to read a book that's this enjoyable. So there is the "humans fighting against vampires" segment of my dream.
* Liz, JE, Amber & I rode the Gold Line into L.A.'s Chinatown yesterday. Each of the stations along the Gold Line route has a different design to it, and one of the station walls appears to have been tagged, until you realize that the scrawl on the wall is actually reminscent of aboriginal art...that or it's a tagger with a sense of style and a lot of paint.
* Liz and I watched "The Missing" on Sunday afternoon. When her daughter is taken by North American Indians, Maggie (Cate Blanchett's character) turns to the local Sheriff who uses a Morse Telegraph machine to request help from the Army stationed at a nearby Fort. The Sheriff is enamored with the Telegraph machine, and despite how distraught the mother before him must be, he is happy that he has a chance to show off his amazing machine. Although the reply from the Fort is not good (the Army will start looking for Maggie's daughter when they get around to it), the Sheriff presents this news to Maggie with a smile because of how quickly they received a response.

An interesting aspect of most of these kinds of dreams, or at least of mine, is that if I am woken during the middle of the dream, when I get back to sleep I will usually re-enter the dream shortly after I left it, as happened this morning. This is not always a good thing, sometimes reality is a good escape from our dreams, and we may not necessarily wish to re-enter them. Last night's dream was fairly tame compared to most of my Humans vs "some bad guys" dreams. I don't think I even encountered the Bad Guys, whatever they were.

Re: Dusty's question in me comments section.

Puzzle Pirates is a cute little online puzzle/pirate game. Unfortunately it has a pretty big download when you first install the game, and unless you want to just play the demo puzzles and levels you have to shell out money each month (a la most every other online game) to really enjoy it. One little bonus is that you can join up with your friends online, assuming they're also willing to shell out money each month to pretend to be a puzzle-solving Pirate. You can then all crew a Pirate Ship (the same ship), sail the seven seas (unless the internet has more than seven...or less) looting and plundering enemy vessels for fame and fortune. Of course to be a successful looter and plunderer you need to be good at solving puzzles. The puzzles are in the vein of Tetris, or variants thereof, so if you like that kind of thing and you enjoy pretending to be a pirate, and you don't mind coughing up $10 or so each month, you might enjoy Puzzle Pirates.

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Friday, January 14, 2005, 11:53 a.m.

Pretty women, and fake rain

What's with the pretty women who want to keep touching me?

Not in any sexual way (as far as I'm aware, I can't read their minds) but during casual conversation I've had several pretty women feel compelled to touch my arm or my leg.

I had a meeting this morning with the payroll officer of a contractor whose books I will be auditing, and it was just the two of us in her office going over payroll reporting procedure and what I'll be expecting from their company, and twice she accented her comments by touching my arm and my knee!

Earlier this week a pretty coworker also felt compelled to touch my arm when she made an amusing comment. Now I was already laughing at what she'd said, I didn't need encouragement, but as she made the comment and we both laughed, she leaned over and touched my arm!

I even had a pretty coworker at another office I once worked at, who didn't just touch my arm or leg with her hand, although she did do that, but on more than one occasion, during work-oriented conversations, she also leaned into me and pressed her breast against my arm. Now the touching with the hand, I've learned to accept, I'm sure it really doesn't mean anything, but the pressing of the breast against my arm and holding it there!!! that just freaked me out.

I flirt shamelessly with one of Liz's really good friends, but it's just verbal flirting, I've never touched her in a suggestive way nor would I know what to do with her if she responded...ok, so I'd know what to do but I wouldn't actually do anything...although I did attempt to give her a foot/leg massage once when she lived with us and she was complaining about being on her feet all day...but Liz was there as well, in the same room, and Liz tried to convince her friend to let me give her a foot massage and...never mind :P

And I did give one of Liz's cousins a foot massage one time and she apparently had a really good time as I rubbed her feet, I mean a really good time, if you know what I'm saying...but then that doesn't mean anything ;)

Let's change the topic and move on to the Fake Rain :D

I'm driving through downtown L.A. and a film crew is setting up for a shoot, like film crews are always doing in downtown, and they had one of those electronic message boards warning drivers to use caution because Movie Rain Effects were present.

WTF?!?!

It rained here for almost two straight weeks. It rained so much that every river I've driven over in the last week is full of water, and they're never full of water, but the film crew waited for it to stop raining before they put up their FX set so they could film their scene in the "rain".

As Alanis once sang, Isn't it ironic?

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Wednesday, January 12, 2005, 05:10 p.m.

One fine day in L.A.

Today I went on an audit with a coworker, but as my coworker is a diabetic and he somehow forgot to bring his insulin, we first had to go to his house in Gardena. LA Office to Gardena: 14 miles
The office where we were conducting the audit was in Pomona: 42 miles.
On the way back in to the office we stopped off at our house for coffee and Tim-Tams (yummy): 18 miles
As we passed over the San Gabriel River I was amazed to see it is filled with water. I mean of course it is, given all the rain we've had, but this is the dry river bed where I usually take Anzac for walkies, and it was filled with water from one bank to the other.
After morning tea we headed back into work: 16 miles
With the information we'd gathered at the morning's audit, we checked in at the office then headed on to west LA, in particular the area known as Korea Town, to audit a second contractor: 6 miles
With it already 1pm we decided we'd have lunch first, and we somehow made our way back to an L.A. "hall-in-the-wall" icon known as Lucy's, just a few blocks north of the U.S.C. campus: 3 miles
After engorging myself on a Pork Chimichunga w/ rice & beans we headed back to Korea Town...where both my coworker and I decided we did not like the look of the area at all. The curb out front of the contractor's office had been made a temporary No Stopping zone, and a trip down a couple of side streets to check out alternative parking had me quickly flicking the central-locking switch. We decided death before dishonor is for fools and we headed back to the office: 9 miles
Total distance traveled today: 92 miles

All in all, a productive day.

Although I'm still stuffed and not at all in the mood for dinner, even if it is a deliciously yummy Shepherd's Pie Liz made.

Maybe in an hour or so I might be able to face a plate full of food :P

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Sunday, January 9, 2005, 08:56 a.m.

Where'd this rain come from?

It's been raining almost non-stop since Friday. Except for a couple of days last week, it's also been raining since Christmas...I think...at least it seems like it's been raining that long. Yeah, that'd be right, because it started raining a couple of days after the Tsunami and pretty much hasn't stopped. This is just nuts.

I had a dentist appointment on Friday. Because I was a naughty boy and didn't go to the dentist for about five years in Australia, then came here and didn't go to the dentist again for another six years, when I finally did go about two years ago I discovered I needed a lot of work done. Duh! I got a root canal and a crown and several fillings, inc. several of my older silver fillings replaced with white porcelain, which I must admit makes my mouth look a whole lot better. So this Friday I went back in and had some more fillings and a deep scaling on the left side of my mouth. I wasn't satisfied with the rinse job done in the chair after the dentist had finished, so I slipped into the bathroom and rinsed there as well, and a good thing too. That also gave me a chance to clean up and wash the blood splatter off my face. When I looked in the mirror it looked like I'd had a stroke as only the right side of my face had movement. When I talked, the left side of my mouth didn't move at all. Freaky! :P

Liz wanted to go to the Glendale Galleria so that was our next stop, where Liz returned some clothes and got into a fight at Gap Kids when they told her she could only get Store Credit because she'd had the clothes for over six months. The clerk had to show us where on the back of the receipt it showed six months, it actually says 180 days, but it was there. So Liz returned the clothes and bought some new ones. JE and I visited the Pet Store where he was fascinated with the Hamsters. Unfortunately Hamsters usually only live for two to three years, which means JE would be about 6 to 7 years old when Hammy the Hamster would leave this world for the great Hamster Habitat in the sky, so we didn't get a Hamster. Barring any unforseen accidents or diseases Anzac should live for another 12 to 14 years, so JE will almost be off to college before that unhappy event. Amber, of course, will be 13 to 14 when Anzac leaves for the Great Puppy Park in the sky, so that's going to cause a little heartbreak for her...and Dad.

We had lunch in the mall, well, Liz and JE did. I was getting hungry but really didn't feel up to a copious amount of chewing. I probably could have got a smoothie or something and that probably would have been ok. I've done that sometimes for lunch immediately after getting fillings. When stopped at Whole Foods on the way home a guy was handing out bagel samples with cream cheese spread, and I couldn't resist. I took a piece, and the cream cheese was delicious and the bagel soft and chewy, but damn it hurt to chew. Even chewing on the right side of my mouth made the muscles on the left side hurt as I chewed. We got a bunch of things, including some natural granola, which I'm eating now, and I still have to chew with the right side of my mouth coz the left side is a little tender.

The rest of the weekend has been fairly quiet. We joined Jeanny, one of Liz's friends, for lunch yesterday at the Macaroni Grill in Arcadia. She popped around again last night and brought yummy chinese dessert from a local bakery. I brewed some coffee and we talked long into the night. After Jeanny left Amber was still up, so Liz and I watched one of our Netflix movies. Netflix are being naughty again and pretending they haven't received the movies we mailed in. Although they must have, but then without sending them in our own envelope with a tracking sticker, we really have no way of knowing when they really did receive them. I think a lot of people need to mail their movies back with tracking slips/receipt confirmation, and then take out a class-action lawsuit against Netflix for failing to send out replacement movies in a timely manner. Hopefully competition with Walmart and Blockbuster and whoever else jumps on the bandwagon will spur Netflix on to new heights of customer service. Despite this shady practice of theirs, we're still getting good value for our money and we almost always have a movie here to watch...mainly because we don't always watch the movies as soon as they arrive ;)

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Wednesday, January 5, 2005, 05:52 p.m.

Anzac is a little woofy

No, not loud. I mean he's a smelly dog. I just gave him lots of pats, then I washed my hands with a waterless, alcohol-based, antibacterial handwash we have, then I washed them with soap and water, and I'm sitting here resting my chin on my hand, and I can still smell my dog!!!

He doesn't smell good.

I'd give him a bath, but he's not just woofy, he's woolly, so he's gonna take forever to dry. And for once winter has come to Southern California and it's been raining for a week & a half. Today, it didn't rain, but it could rain any and every day for the rest of the week and I don't want to have a damp doggy outside in the cold. Sure, I could keep him inside the house until he's dry. I could light the fire downstairs and keep him down there with me for a few hours until he's dry. That's a possibility. But I'd rather wait for a nice, warm, weekend when I can bath him, get him moderately dry, then take him for a walk down to the river...but after all the rain, the river is a river once more instead of the usual dry river bed. So I need the river to dry up as well.

That, or I wash him and keep him inside for a few hours by the fire :P

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Wednesday, January 5, 2005, 02:55 p.m.

Innuendos in the Office

I love my job and my coworkers. We're all one big, happy family. We work together, play together and have a lot of fun together.

This week has been Innuendo Week at our office, sponsored by a coworker whom I shall call A, who brought in a bag of mixed nuts for all of us to enjoy.

Of course this generated such comments as:
Here, try a couple of A's nuts?
I can't crack A's nuts!
A, your nuts are really hard?
Does A have any nuts left? someone would ask. He's got a couple, someone else would reply.

Yes, peurile humor at its best :)

Then today a coworker enquired as to what our lunch plans were by asking, "Who wants to eat Chinese?"
As that coworker is fully aware that my wife is Chinese I needed to do nothing more than give him a long look and he quickly blurted out, "I mean, who wants to have lunch at the New Moon Chinese Restaurant?"

"That's a little more specific," said another coworker from the other side of the cubicle wall, and we all burst out laughing.

I may not be around Godiva chocolates all day long (and that's probably a good thing) but I still love my job ;)

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Wednesday, January 5, 2005, 07:17 a.m.

J.C. Vampire Hunter

"In the New Millenium, Vampires no longer fear the sun.
Now they're going to learn it's time to fear the Son of God!"

Yes, it's a real movie, and Netflix has it!

Awesome!

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Tuesday, January 4, 2005, 10:43 p.m.

Wow!

I'm watching a show on Fit-TV, no idea the name of it, but it's showing just how amazing the human body is and the incredible feats of which we are capable.

Now the most fascinating thing on the show was the guy who went diving into "the twilight zone", which means going approx. 1,000 feet down. It's quite possible to dive this deep, but it's doing so which puts divers at risk of "the bends". The diver on the show spent just 20 minutes in the twilight zone, but so much nitrogen accumulated in his blood during that time that his ascent back to the surface took 4 HOURS!!!

Cool! Now they're covering the opposite extreme and are showing climbers and how they adapt to climbing at high-altitude. In this case their climbers are currently at 20,000 feet above sea-level. FYI, Mt. Everest is 29,000 feet above sea-level.

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Tuesday, January 4, 2005, 08:04 p.m.

Another letter the L.A. Times is unlikely to publish

I frequently write (email) letters to the L.A. Times, and occasionally see them get published, but more often than not they don't. Here's a letter I sent in today which I also don't expect to get publish...so I'll publish it myself :P

We can only assume the Mexican government is in support of its citizens breaking the law ("Mexico's Border-Crossing Tips Anger Some in U.S.," Jan. 4). That must be why they provide booklets to help their citizens enter the United States illegally, rather than fix up their own country and make it a more desirable place to live. Then again, they are competing with the Land of Hope and Opportunity, so I can understand why they didn't even bother trying.

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Saturday, January 1, 2005, 09:37 a.m.

Happy New Year

Well...so it's now 2005. We've made it 4 years into the new millenium without destroying the planet or each other, although it would seem as though we're doing our best to rectify that situation and the planet itself is lending a hand, too.

Despite not visiting with any friends last night, Liz and I actually stayed up and saw the New Year in. Normally when home by ourselves we pike out around 11 or 11:30 but this time we were up for a good 30 minutes past midnight. Of course Liz was feeding Amber at the time and I was in bed playing Pokemon on the Gameboy, but we were awake ;)

So we didn't watch the ball drop in Times Square like we did last year, not that we watched it in Times Square, we just watched it on TV like millions of other Americans...in fact I guess the world could have ended already and here I am, typing away in my blog like nothing has happened. Of course my PC works, I have an active internet connection, coffee is brewing downstairs...actually it's probably finished brewing, back in a second...oh yeah! That's the stuff!

So, the world could have ended, but I've got hot, freshly brewed coffee right here. Do I care? I think I'll just wait for the zombies, or aliens, or terrorists of the month to come knocking at my door. Until then, I might get JE into a multi-player Warcraft III game.

Speaking of which...although this actually relates more to Blizzard and World of Warcraft and the Best Buy chain rather than Warcraft III...on a recent visit to one of my local Best Buy stores where I might have considered buying World of Warcraft had they had any in stock (but they were all sold out), I was a little dismayed at the horribly small selection of PC games they had in stock. Just two shelves. There was a time when Best Buy had two whole rows, eight to ten to twelve shelves, of PC games. PC games as far as the eye could see, if you had tunnel vision and were just looking at the PC games, that is ;)

Of course maybe they sold a lot of the PC games over Christmas and haven't restocked yet. Let's hope that's the case. For now, it's Warcraft III time ;)

A quick review and edit of this post gave me a chance to check out my WeatherPixie. He's not wearing HazMat gear so I can only assume the world hasn't ended, but even though the sun is shining he still looks bloody cold! It's under 50F here in Los Angeles! Maybe the world won't end, and we'll just have another Ice Age. Things could still be worse. We could be in an Ice Age and enslaved by aliens and forced to wear little fur bikinis...I don't think I'd look too good in a little fur bikini ;)

Happy New Year, everybody :)

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