Tuesday's Update Remnants and Earthlink

Tuesday’s Update Remnants and Earthlink
I got stuck with a batch of Microsoft updates on Tuesday. I held off on doing the required restart until I went to bed. The machine could handle the start by itself. I figured that I could log on when I got home from work.

Crud, I was so wrong.

My Internet Service Provider is Earthlink.net and I have been a more than patient customer for more than ten years now. I know I would have to power cycle [turn it on and off] my modem and reboot my laptop before the Earthlink software will function properly.

I did that when I got home.

No freaking luck.

I got an error message that said my log on name and password were not recognized by the server. Had I not exercised extreme restraint, I would have ripped my laptop out of its docking station and tossed it through the window. I have only been using the same log on name and password for over ten years now.

My frustration level with Earthlink has reached a new high today.

I am writing this portion of the blog while I sit here, waiting for technical support in the form of Bambi from Bangalore to come on the telephone. I know from past experience that she will be incapable of handling my trouble and have absolutely no clue as to understanding my problem.

So far, the clock is at 25 minutes of the cheesiest music on hold and the annoying, continuing, crummy commercials for products that I am now never ever likely to buy from this company.

I think even AOL would look good to me by now but I am not that desperate, yet.

I have made up my mind. I will convert my Earthlink service to their cheap dial up service and sign up for broadband service from the local phone company. I will save money and be able to continue to use the Earthlink email address until I get all of the users and people I exchange emails with converted over to the phone company email address.

35 minutes on hold and Alex is on the phone.

Alex told me that the problem is with my local phone company Verizon. How convenient. He told me that the call center is getting many calls from customers in Southern California who have Verizon for a local phone company.

He said everyone has the same error message; how comforting to know that. I have lots of company in the lifeboat I guess.

Alex wanted to escalate my call to a senior technician and he put me back on hold, again with the same crummy music.

I went along with his charade because he seemed like a nice guy.

How escalating my complaint is going to fix things is far from me. It seems like Earthlink is aware of the nature of the problem and ought to be working to fix or resolve the problem.

45 minutes of total hold time so far now.

Alex transferred me to a senior level technician where the wait is less than ten minutes.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called while I was on hold with Earthlink. She wanted to talk to me about a job application. She wanted to know if she could use me as a reference and I said certainly

I had to cut the call short because Tim the senior level technician came on the phone.

Tuesday’s Update Remnants Part II
I got transferred and then the senior level technician, Tim, could not pick up my phone call. I could hear him but he could not hear me.

I had to hang up after Tim hung up on me.

Babe of the Moment Photos
I phoned Doug this morning for a suggestion on where to go to find photos of the Babe of the Moment. As you will recall, I was grumbling about not being able to find some photos for my contemplated Babe of the Moment.

Doug, being the blog savvy guy that he is, suggested that I go to Google Images and search there for a photo or two.

Perfect suggestion, if I could get online.

Tuesday’s Update Remnants Part III
I dialed back and was place on hold where the waiting time is less than ten minutes.

Oh freaking joy.

55 minutes of total hold time so far now.

The new technician, Sam answered the phone and I told him my story, again. I asked that he transfer me and my trouble ticket to a senior level technician. Sam repeated everything I had told him and then said, “Let me transfer to a senior level technician.”

I was tempted to say something really sarcastic and caustic but I decided that I shouldn’t do that since Sam had nothing to do with the earlier troubles and he was trying to help me.

I did utilize my extensive time on hold to periodically check back in and see if the server problem had been fixed

The music on hold, when you are waiting for a senior level technician, is ever so marginally better, a modest improvement.

70 minutes of total hold time so far now.

One of the nice things, if I can say, about the hold for a senior level technician is there are no annoying sales messages. I suppose that is a modest victory for those who only sit and wait for their call to be answered.

At the 80 minute mark, Lisa the senior technician came on the phone. I gave Lisa my story again. I am getting very good at telling the story by now as you could expect and I was extremely pleasant and not hostile at all.

She put me on hold, of course, to check account and my trouble ticket.

Lisa came back to me and said the problem was that I was on a frame relay circuit and the Earthlink was no longer supporting frame relay and was now supporting the ATM circuit.

I had to ask what ATM stood for. Lisa had to put me on hold while she found out that ATM stands for Asynchronous Transfer Mode.

80 minutes of total hold time so far now; total time with Earthlink, 95 minutes.

All of Lisa’s comments got me to thinking about what a poor job Earthlink did about notifying customers about a change in service and then once they got an unhappy customer on the phone what a piss-poor job they did of handling his complaint.

Lisa said I could call back anytime within the next two weeks and use my trouble ticket if I had any more connection troubles.

This was simply not what I wanted to hear at all. In a very calm and even voice I told Lisa that if I had to call again about connections it would be to cancel my service.

Dead, silent, pause.

Then, Lisa mumbled some standard form of apology to me and expressed a hope that I would not cancel my service. I said that my continuing as a customer depended on how well and how quickly my trouble was resolved.

Lisa put me back on hold and transferred me off to the Installation people who would work to shift my service over to the ATM circuit.

At least the music on hold while waiting for the Installation people is fairly soft so I can’t hear it very well. This is one of the very few times in my life where my hearing loss from the Navy has been beneficial to me

110 minutes of total hold time so far now; total time with Earthlink, 125 minutes.

The Installation Department bimbo Sam came on the phone and told me that it would take up to 14 days to process my order to change my service.

I told her that I hadn’t changed my account at all. I said some things about being on hold for close to two hours and still not being able to resolve my trouble.

Sam said that I could use the dial up function to access the Internet. Then, she transferred me to Dial Up Installation and the hold.

I was on hold for another twenty minutes until Joe came on the line.

Making a long and painful story short, Joe was able to get me online in a dial up mode. It took all of two hours and forty minutes including a twenty minute call back to me from India so I could get my dial up connection set up.


That was part of my day gentle readers, a very long part of my day.

Be well and stay happy.

So It's Tuesday

So It’s Tuesday
Today was one of those days that seemed to fly for a change; until like Friday that seemed to drag on forever.

It was a productive day for me at work. I finished up two projects for the client today. My work product will go to the Board of Directors at their monthly meeting; not that this is significant in and of itself. Recognition is always nice.

Still, it is nice to bring closure to some projects.

I have one large project that is coming to a conclusion by the end of the week. This will concluded project will roll into a companion project of contract negotiations that is good for probably two more weeks of work and then I will be asked to help with the implementation of the project.

Babe of the Moment
I had a couple of Babes of the Moment that I was contemplating putting up in the blog. I ran into some modest trouble. One of the potential Babes of the Moment has hardly any photos available on the Internet. I didn’t like any of the available photos from the other one.

Ummmm; maybe that is an exaggeration. I only looked through the first thirty web sites that came up in the Google search. There was just no way to even consider scrolling through 21,000 sites to find the photos that I might like.

One would think that for a woman who is in the entertainment industry that she would want her photos all over the place and readily available for semi-nerdy guys like me.

I suppose leaving the current Babe of the Moment, Sharon Tay, up for a few more days is hardly a bad decision.

Visitor Traffic
The blog reached 300 visitors for the month today. This is the highest traffic level the blog has experienced without a referral from another site like Skeet on Mischa.

Give yourselves a big pat on your collective backs.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Car Wash
I had my car washed at the office on Thursday. It needed to be washed and having it done while I was at work was convenient for me. I was very pleased with how well the Prelude looked when the crew was finished with it.

The Prelude looked shiny and very nice. I had the crew hand wash, all washing is by hand, and wax the car. I also had them shampoo the carpets in the front seats. With the Prelude coming up on eighteen years of fun driving, the carpets needed the shampoo.

The cost was a very reasonable $40.

If I had taken the Prelude to the regular car wash, it would have received a mechanical wash and hand wax for $40 and no shampoo.

Visitors, Foreign and Domestic
We had significantly fewer foreign visitors this past week. As you know, I do not think of Canada as being a foreign country, eh. The big surprise this week in the foreign visitors was that we had two different visitors from Malaysia and that was unusual for the blog. We also had one visitor each from Japan and the United Kingdom.

Babe of the Moment



I thought I would toss out another photo of the current Babe of the Moment, Sharon Tay. Eye candy is never fattening and always enjoyable.

I think I will put up a new Babe of the Moment during the week. This will give you a reason to visit the blog won’t it?

Xue’s Project
I finished up Xue’s Project and sent it back to her early on Saturday morning. I think I spent about ten or twelve hours revising and editing her paper. Xue has to go through the changes that I made to make certain I did not change any of the theme or ideas of the paper.

I also told Xue that I would be willing to do this editing work for her when she is her American graduate school in Michigan in the Fall. My guess is that she will accept the offer.

I did learn a fair amount about China’s urban poor problem and what is being done to correct the problem. I do not know how successful China will be in its drive to eliminate urban poverty.

Xue sent me an email late on Sunday night. She loved what I did with her paper, especially since I was able to keep all of her ideas and thoughts and only made grammatical changes. It’s nice to be appreciated for your work.

Carbon Dating Myself
I have a television set where you have to turn a knob on the set box to change the channels.

Books
I went to the local Barnes & Noble bookstore on Saturday morning to pick up a book that my good friend Ling had recommended to me.

I was out of books to read since I had finished off the last book that the Princess had given me for birthday. The three books from her were an easy and relaxing read for me.

I needed to get a book or two since the weather has turned summery and I like to read while I smoke a cigar on the balcony. I had thought Ling’s book recommendation, The Alchemist, would be a fairly long book. It is on the short side at only 167 pages. Since it is in a larger size font and with the smaller pages of a paperback book, I knew I would need another book to read.

The other book is called The Island of the Seven Cities. The second book presents a very recent theory that the ancient Chinese had sailed from China in wooden junks, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and established a thriving colony on Cape Breton Island in Canada long before Columbus sailed for the New World.

I thought that was just an absolutely fascinating premise and one that should prove interesting reading.

And, on a related note, time really flies.

The bookstore was selling 2007 planners and 2006 is not even half over. I guess time really does fly.

But, if time does fly, does time fly first class? Does time ever have lost bags? Does time get stuck next to an unpleasant person in the row?

Maybe, time is different from you and me.

University of Utah
I got a call, voice messages actually, from one of my friends at the University of Utah. In the interest of full and fair disclosure, our relationship is more like that of donor and donee and I am the donor.

I believe in making charitable contributions and I have supported the College of Humanities over the years. I know I am not anywhere close to a major big time donor. The College doesn’t usually get much in the way of specific donations because many graduates end up with emotionally and intellectually rewarding but low paying jobs.

I think I have given the College enough where they could name a door after me. That would be neat, the Charles F. Reinhardt, Jr. Door. The Door would probably lead into a closet.

Anyway and back to story, my friend Tim called to say he was going to be in town in early June and wondered if I was available for a lunch. I returned his call and left him a message that said I would look forward to having lunch with him. I expect that we will connect sometime next week and firm our plans up.

The other reason Tim called was to have me pass on some information to the Princess about some upcoming job openings at the U. The Princess worked for Tim at the Children’s Miracle Network in Salt Lake City after she graduated from the U. Tim felt the jobs would be perfect for the Princess if she wanted to move back to Salt Lake City.

Being the good father, I dutifully phoned the Princess on Thursday night and left her a message. I don’t usually get a hold of the Princess on Thursday nights; she works a 4 day / 40 hour week and has Fridays off.

I did catch up with the Princess on Friday. It turns out that she and her roommate had gotten an early start on the long Memorial Day Weekend by hitting a few of their favorite clubs the night before.

We talked about Tim’s job call and why it might make sense to call him and at least explore the opportunities. I pointed out that if she was in Salt Lake City that it would be easy to come home to Southern California on long weekends like Memorial Day and Thanksgiving. The Princess did agree that this was true. She did agree to call Tim next week and talk to him about what the jobs were about.

The Princess said that they do celebrate that Yankee holiday, Memorial Day, in the South. She said that they, the Southerners, remember all of the gallant young men who died in defense of The Cause. The Princess said she and her roommate would be celebrating all weekend long. I expect that Tuesday, when she has to go back to work, will be a very long day for her and her roomate.

The Memorial Day Holiday was originally established after our Civil War by the Union Army survivors [Northern or Yankee] to remember and commemorate the dead from the war. This was a relatively easy task since the majority of the country’s national government leaders were Union army veterans. Since our country has fought in a number of other wars since then, now, we celebrate the sacrifices of all service members from all of the wars. In time, the older veterans die off and those who are left do not often understand the sacrifices that the veterans made.

I served in the United States Navy during the Viet Nam War. Sailors did not usually come home with long term injuries. I came home with a partial hearing loss that will probably become worse in the coming years so that I will have to wear a hearing aid.

Like some veterans, I have periodic flashbacks. I have been dealing with the flashbacks since I came home in 1969. The flashbacks are not going to cause me to go off and do something incredibly stupid or dangerous; they are just part of my life and always will be.

Work and the Building
The building where I am working now has been having one of the elevators repaired for about two weeks. If I worked on an upper floor, I would have some concern about the other elevators. It must be upsetting for those who work on an upper floor of the building to come to work everyday and see the same repair crew crawling in and out of the elevator shaft all day long.

I know I would be concerned and might start using the building stairs to reach my floor. Taking the stairs would be good exercise and I would not have to wait for an elevator car to arrive on my floor.

The building management company put up a notice on Friday that said they were upgrading the elevators and that this would take several weeks. It seemed to me that they should have put the notices up sooner.

We had our spur of the moment pot luck on Friday. My Greek Caesar Salad went over very well. There was only one serving of salad left at the end of the day and I let one of the staffers who just raved about it take it home with her. I probably ate more than I should have eaten at lunch. I was still semi-full at dinner time that I ended up only having a snack.

Lunch was filling. We had fried chicken, my salad, my gringo rice [cooked by someone else], enchiladas, chips and salsa, and soft drinks. There was no dessert but then I didn’t have much room for dessert serving. I guess the donuts that we had in the morning were our early dessert.

Cosmetics Class
There were more coz classes on Friday.

I wonder why anyone would schedule a class on a Friday before a three day long weekend. Surely, none of the students have their minds on what is being taught in the class. I expect the instructor was not thinking about the lesson plan either.

Some of the students dress choices seemed to amaze me. There was one rather large student who sat down outside of my office during a smoke break. It was hard not to notice her since she was very loud. I noticed that her choice of clothing seemed rather odd to me. She was wearing very tight tee shirt, the idea of a sausage casing did come to my mind. This tended to accentuate her weight problem. To make matters visually worse, her tee shirt did not cover all of her; her stomach sort of peeked out from under the bottom of the tee shirt in a pinkish roll.

Far be it from me to be a fashion critic; dress choices like that just make me wonder why?

Since it is the start of Summer for us, the coz class girls were wearing less clothing and showing off more skin including some good and some not so good body art [tattoos].

I did notice one coz girl who had some attractive and not too garish tats. She had a small heart on the Achilles tendon of each leg. I thought that was not excessive and generally attractive to me. Of course, she could have had more tats in places where I could not see them in the glaring light of day. This student had short hair that she had pushed together to create what is called a Faux Hawk hair style. Doug had to explain the style to me.

Overall, I thought she looked very attractive in an untanned sort of way.

Dissertation
I didn’t get as much writing done as I wanted to do this weekend. I managed to get in a good fifteen pages. My goal was twenty to thirty pages so I am satisfied.

I did manage to organize my reference material better; actually, I made a good start on organizing the material. If I am lucky, I will be able to finish the organization work by the end of the week. That was a significant event since I have about 175 pieces of reference material. This will make it easier for me to write on the coming weekends.

Weather
The weather at the beach was great this weekend. It was sunny and warm after the early morning clouds burned off. I did go out on the balcony to smoke and read on all three days this weekend.

Bar-Be-Que
My old standby, the bar-be-que, is not looking too swell right now. I have a Weber brand kettle bar-be-que and it is almost thirty years old. Being outside and exposed to the damp, salty, beach air has not been kind to its metal body. Rust is showing through in several spots.

I was scooping the ashes out of the fire box section on Saturday in preparation for cooking. I was using a trowel and I managed to puncture a hole in the pan that catches the ashes. That came as a surprise to me.

I suppose that I can find replacement parts and that would be fine except for the fact the overall condition is deteriorating and will continue to do so. I am inclined to wait and make a decision next year. I am fairly confident that it will last through this year at least.

My cooking was just excellent; I cooked steaks and chicken so I have steaks and chicken to eat into next week.


That was by weekend gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

I Hate It When a Plan Falls Apart

I hate it when a plan falls apart
I had every good intention of posting a long blog, Weekend Preview edition for you tonight. That was around lunchtime for me.

Then, my plans fell apart. The staff in the office decided to have a spur of the moment pot luck lunch tomorrow. I was the last one to get to pick what he or she would contribute to the lunch. I ended up with a salad.

I have to prepare the salad tonight before I go to bed because I just do not want to have to get up early and put the salad together. I am going to fix my Greek Caesar salad. It is easy to make but it takes some time. I have to chop up the romaine lettuce and then slice the Kalamata olives. I couldn’t find any sliced ones. I will finish off everything by putting all of the stuff in plastic bags so there is no clean up. One of the secretaries reminded me that she liked anchovies in her salad. She was fortunate because I do as well.

Then, I had to help her with her spicy rice dish; she was at a loss on how to put it together. I gave her my easy to do gringo rice recipe; it works every time.

1. Boil / cook white rice and then drain completely.

2. Add 4 to 8 tablespoons of salsa, any flavor will work, to the rice.

3. Add some ketchup for coloring and season with chili powder, cilantro, or other hot spices to taste; mix together and serve promptly.

I was going to go to the market tonight on my way home so I was not making an extra trip to the market. That was one element of my weekend plans that did not fail me.

Then, when I got home, Lisa the ill manager from my old office called me to tell me about her illness. She has a nasty blood clot in her right arm; the arm is swollen and black and blue in spots. Lisa was quick to tell me her husband did not beat her for being away for a week.

Lisa went on for about forty minutes talking about her arm, the swelling, the discomfort, and the doctor visits. Lisa is also right handed so she can’t do very much with a badly swollen arm for the time being. As you might have guessed, I am really good at listening to women on the telephone. We talked briefly about the old office and who is sick besides her. Then, we played question and answer about sick leave and how it works or should work. I am probably the worst person to ask about sick leave because I rarely am ill.

On the plus side, I will have a lot to talk about when I write the Weekend Update on Monday. I should have a fair amount to say for a change. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Be well and stay happy.

Xue's Project

Xue’s Project
I received an email from Xue this morning.

Xue really liked the work I had put into her paper. She said I was doing just what she hoped I would do with the paper. That made me feel better and that I was doing something worthwhile with my time instead of squandering it like I often do when I come home from work in the evening.

I have not made the offer to help her with her papers when she is graduate school in America yet. I will do that after I finish this paper. I have finished about 75% of the work and I am taking a break from it tonight. I hope to finish it tomorrow night.

Sharon
My friend Sharon, not Sharon Tay, phoned me today. Actually, she phoned me twice and that was a surprise.

Sharon wanted to know if she could use me as a job reference. Sharon knew I would say yes. She really wanted to check which phone number and email address to use. I have three personal cell phones and four personal email addresses.

One of these days I will explain why I have so many personal cell phones.

Then, she called back a little later with a question that came up in a job interview she had the other day about how to handle an employee who was spending too much time on the Internet instead of working. It was a bad situation where the company would probably lose in court and be caught with a nasty fine.

I gave her a suggestion or two on how to handle it. Hopefully, this was just an interview question and not a real problem at the company. If it is a real problem, then I would suggest that Sharon consider alternative employment.

Lunch at the Old Office
I was going to have lunch at the old office with one of the managers today.

I had left her a voice message yesterday just to confirm lunch. I did not want to pass up billable time and waste an afternoon if the lunch was not going to happen. She had been out of the country last week on vacation and was due back in the office on Monday. We figured Wednesday for lunch would give her time to dig out from under the pile of paper on her desk.

I had an email from her early this morning. She had to cancel because she came home from Germany and was very ill; I replied and said, “it must be the water here.” We will reschedule our lunch for sometime next month.


There was more to my day but I do not think the rest of my day was very interesting.

Be well and stay happy.

Waiting for Xue

Waiting for Xue
I am waiting for Xue to respond to an email I sent her last night. I am about half way through her paper and I have been busy with suggestions for changes so it is more like an American English school paper. I wanted to be certain that what I was doing was what Xue had in mind before I sunk any more time into the project.

As you know, I have had a good deal of experience in reviewing and suggesting improvements to school papers; I did three papers and a PowerPoint presentation this semester for Doug. I expect that Xue may ask me to look at her papers when she comes to the States. I will be happy to help her over the next two years of graduate school studying in the States.

Haruku 17
My Japanese serial ended on Sunday at episode ten. I was expecting that there were more episodes and that I was going to miss them. As it turned out, there were only ten episodes so I was fine. The show could have gone on for more episodes and developed some of the characters more.

Oh well, I was not the producer so I will just move on to the next series that starts on Sunday. The new series is called Dragon Zakura and it looks like it takes place in a Japanese high school or middle school. Since I have no other plans for Sunday night, I will give it a look and see what develops.

Weather
We had rain in Southern California on Monday. It was a fairly good storm by our standards for this late in the year. The rainfall where I live was about a half inch /one centimeter. That was more than enough to make a mess of the car’s paint. I have water spots all over my car and mud on the sides.

Programming Note
This weekend is our Memorial Day Weekend and Monday is a holiday. That means the Weekend Update will appear on Monday instead of the usual Sunday posting. I will try to put a better blog posting together on Monday so that you don’t feel cheated on your daily reading quotas.

Cosmetics Class
There were coz classes again today and this got me thinking.

What will the coz class girls wear when the weather turns really warm in the Summer?

I know that they love to wear black; but, black is not the best color to wear for Summer. It will be very warm and probably uncomfortable for them. Long black pants seem like a poor choice for the Summer also.

A couple of the coz girls were sitting on the bench outside of my office during their smoke break this morning while I was on the telephone with a vendor. One of them had tattoos on her shoulders and I am guessing on her arms as well. I had gone for a couple of weeks without seeing any really bad tats. Today seemed to bring them out. Another woman had tats on both of her calves and maybe there were more that I could not see, thankfully.

Does this mean that in the Summer, tats will become more visible because the young women are wearing less clothing? That was a sobering thought for me.

Vendor Reference Checks
I am doing vendor reference checks today on a new program that my client credit union is thinking of offering. A reference check is designed to validate the vendor's claims and to determine the level and quality of their service to their customers. Usually, it is a waste of time because the vendor picks only those companies that will say the vendor is doing a wonderful job. Even though the answers are almost always positive, you have to go through the motions.

Today, I hit the reference call jackpot.

I picked four clients from a list of twelve that the vendor supplied to me. I was only able to contact three of the four clients. One client said they were no longer doing business with the company. Another client said the fees the vendor charged were too high and were planning to make a change soon.

Another vendor’s reference list contact person at another credit union died last year.

You have no idea how embarrassed I felt when the operator told me the man died last year. I blamed the bad information on the vendor.

This lack of attention to detail made two of the three vendors look particularly bad in my eyes. Tomorrow, I will review some of the preliminary findings with the senior management. They will enjoy the laugh at the vendors’ expense. Then, we will wonder about the vendors’ ability to deliver on their promises.


Not a great day for me but better than some other days.

Be well and stay happy.

No Blog Tonight

No Blog Tonight
Sorry gentle readers, I will not be able to toss up a blog posting tonight. I got involved with revising a paper for a Chinese student. Yes; Xue met me through an IM program because she wanted to practice her English language skills.

The paper is important to her. Xue will be showing it to an American consular officer so she can obtain her visa to study for her master’s degree in the United States. It is in English fortunately for me because we would get no where if it was in Chinese. Some of the translation to English from Chinese was idiomatic and thus does not follow conventional English grammar rules.

The paper is only twelve pages long and I have spent about six hours on it so far. I am only half way through with the revision. I think the second half is going to be easier to complete.

With luck, I should be back with a regular blog posting on Wednesday.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update and Epiphany

Epiphany
I had one of those shaft of sunlight strikes the brain moments on Saturday morning as I drove to San Diego to pick up a box of cigars. More about the cigars later on.

I realized that I had been talking about how much Doug and I like shorty shorts but it came to me that many of you may not know what shorty shorts look like. Being the conscientious writer that I am, I decided to include a visual explanation of what shorty shorts are.

I also figured from the visual explanation that you would understand our fondness for the shorty shorts. The photos were taken at the 2006 Frankfurt Auto Show. The model is standing next to a Lancia, an Italian sports car that is rarely seen or sold in America.







This is an excellent example of extreme shorty shorts; but, you get the general idea.

Visitors, Foreign and Domestic
This past week was an excellent one for foreign visitors. Frankly, I do believe that some wandered into Balancing Checkbooks and discovered they were lost in the Blog Ether. We had two visitors from the United Kingdom and one each from the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and Lesotho.

Lesotho is a small tribal country in Southern Africa. It is so small that Site Meter.com does not have a national flag for display in tracking where visitors come from.

The overall visitor count is doing very well. When I checked on Saturday afternoon, there had been about 225 individual visits to the site so far this month.

One domestic visitor [United States or Canada] on Saturday logged in and read over twelve pages. I think it is safe to assume that visitor was not lost at all. He or she actually might have found the blog interesting in some manner.

Skeet on Mischa and Lunch
Doug and I had lunch on Saturday at the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster. One of the questions that I had for him was what was going to become of the Skeet on Mischa blog now that she has been killed off in The O.C. as the television season ended.

Doug said he was going to continue the blog since Mischa Barton will still be around and acting. He would always have something to write about with her. I was glad because I know there are a large number of the Skeet Shooters who also visit this blog.

Lunch was epic as usual. We both had the Mega Combos with chili cheese fries and a 44 ounce / 1.3 liters soft drink. You really need the drink with all of the spices in the chili and from the onions.





This was not necessarily the best meal in the world for someone who is taking a diuretic medication. But, the spicy foods are good for increasing metabolism and weight loss.

Armed Forces Day
Saturday was Armed Forces Day in the United States. It is not a major celebration or national holiday for us. We do honor our active duty, reserve duty. and retired service members.

The next city over from Redondo Beach has a big Armed Forces Day parade every year. I am told that it is one of the largest parades in the country. I marched in it once when I was in the Marine Corps Reserves. We were lucky that the horse units in the parade followed us so we did not have to watch where we marched along.

The parade always features military aircraft flyovers. This makes it difficult to study in the afternoon. The aircraft are flying low so the viewers along the parade route can see them. My house is only a half mile / one kilometer south of the parade route street so the noise tends to increase as the pilots increase the throttles to climb up from their low levels. Jet aircraft in general are noisy and military jets are the noisiest aircraft.

But, I don’t mind the noise because it is the sound of freedom.

Cuban Cigar Factory
I arrived at the Cuban Cigar Factory just as it was opening.



As the first customer, I was in and out in less than five minutes. It is not had to say to the helpful clerk that I needed a replacement box of cigars. She found quickly one in the spacious walk-in humidor and opened it just to make sure it was a full box. It was full. I was busy taking photos of the store.





The cigars are hand rolled on site and are not from Cuba. The men who do the rolling may be legal Cuban immigrants since the store is just around the corner from the local Immigration and Naturalization Service.



I have been going to the store for cigars for ten year or so and I have always been satisfied with the quality of the cigars. The Cuban Cigar Company will mail the cigars to you if you order by phone with a credit card. The phone number in the United States is [619] 238-2496 and the street address is 551 Fifth Avenue, San Diego, California 92101.

I have been smoking a Cuban Round Largo cigar with a natural tan wrapper. It is about
6 ½ inches long and about ¾ of inch in diameter or 16.5 centimeters long and just under 2 centimeters in diameter. I happen to like a long cigar because I like to enjoy myself when I light up and read on the balcony.

Buying in bulk, a box of 25 cigars, is a money saving venture. Individually, the cigars are $7.00 each and only $3.75 each when purchased in a box. I “saved” $77.00 today.

I know that I spent more on gasoline to drive to San Diego and back. I know that I could have picked up the phone and ordered a box and it would have arrived in three or four days. And, I also know that I probably could have found a less expensive cigar locally as well.

So, why do I do this?

I think the simple answer is because I can and I deserve a few minor pleasures in life every now and then.

I also wanted to get out of the house for a while. I spent all of last weekend inside writing. And, I normally smoke a cigar on the drive home. I didn’t do that today because I figured we would end up in my car when we went to Tommy’s. Doug does not care for cigar smoke; neither does his sister or mother.

One last point, I did not receive any compensation or gratuity for my cigar testimonial.

Cuban Cigar Company Cigar Smoking and Reading
I did smoke a cigar when I got home Saturday afternoon. It was the free one for returning the empty box.

It was warm and sunny out on the balcony. I was reading the last of the three paperback books that the Princess gave me for my birthday. It is light fiction so it reads fast. I think I finished about 80 or 90 pages in the hour and forty minutes I was out on the balcony.

I think I needed the cigar to counteract the impact of the Original Tommy’s Mega Chili Cheeseburger Combination on my mouth. Although, one might argue that by smoking a cigar, I made things worse and that my taste buds were now in a nuclear taste wasteland sort of state.

Nice Guy Chuck
I played Nice Guy Chuck today at the Cuban Cigar Company.

I recycle the empty wooden cigar boxes. I have no use for a cigar box once it is empty; the kids are well past the age of storing treasures and crayons or markers in cigar boxes. Maybe some day the grandchildren may need treasure storage boxes but that is a long time to come for me.

Oh yes, the Cuban Cigar Company gives you a free cigar for each box you bring back to them.

Being nice has its rewards doesn’t it?

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when it took longer to download a program or program update then it did to install the program.

My ICQ number is only seven digits long.

More Nice Guy Chuck
Did I ever mention that I seem to be a magnet for foreign students who want to practice their English language skills with a native speaker? If I did not mention, now you know that I do this sort of thing.

Nice Guy Chuck across the globe as it were.

One of my Chinese students, actually former student and now successful woman after graduation, asked me to explain a question she found in a sentence. It took Ling [that’s her name] and me a day and a half to discover why she could not understand the question. It was written as a statement and then it was poorly worded for someone who was trying to learn or practice.

This was a very frustrating experience for both of us.

Ling went to bed happy knowing that the difficulty was not her fault. It is nice to be helpful to others.


This is an early blog posting for today. I feel like I had a great weekend. I hope you did as well.

Be welll and stay happy.

Feeling Guilty and Weekend Preview

Feeling Guilty
I felt really guilty about not posting last night. I wanted to post but I got sidetracked because it was pay the bills time. That took like an hour or so; maybe it was less time but it seemed longer.

I wish my money lasted as long.

Anyway, I finished the bills and crawled into bed. I did have a solid, uninterrupted sleep and that was so restful. I will make up last night’s absence with a great Weekend Update posting on Sunday.

Count Basie Orchestra Performance
If you will recall from a week or two ago, I had posted that I was disappointed with the short performance length of the orchestra. I felt 65 minutes was on the short side

Apparently, I was not the only one who felt that way. The theater management company sent me a letter saying they were upset with the performance and they were offering me two, half price tickets to any performance in the current or next season. Since I have seen two of the five productions in the coming season, I was not very interested. But, I may pick up the tickets and use them as a gift; there is the ex-wife’s birthday and there is Christmas so I do have a number of uses.

I will speak with the Big Guy because he will end up going to the performance with his mother. He should have a say in what he ends up seeing.

Doug and Easy Rider Term Paper
Doug called last night to say that he received an “A” on his term paper on the film EASY RIDER.

This was a different call from the other term paper from his children’s television class. It was all very simple and straight forward. I got an “A” and I’m very happy. That was about it. Doug said that his professor only wrote one comment of “interesting” on the paper.

I would have quit when I was ahead with the grade and be happy. His mother and I were both very pleased with the grade. I think we were happier because we did not have to listen to him complain and rant about this professor.

Doug thanked me for making him write to his ability and for helping with the proof reading. He said that it was my urging and comments that made him want to start all over with the paper.

That was nice to hear.

Weekend Preview
This was going to be another weekend of writing and maybe a little cleaning around the place. That has all changed by now.

Saturday is my day to drive to San Diego for fresh cigars to last me through year end. I will try to take a photo or two of the Cuban Cigar Factory in the Gas Lamp District in San Diego.

It is right around the corner from a Hooters restaurant. Normally, I would think long and hard and seriously about having my lunch at Hooters and then drive home while I smoked a cigar. Unfortunately, the service has really been bad when I have gone there before; perhaps, really sucked is a better description of their non-service.

Doug and I will take lunch at the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster [North Orange County] instead. You can’t go wrong for a meal at Tommy’s. On the subject of Tommy’s, one of the local television stations did a news remote broadcast from Tommy’s on Monday. People were saying they had been in line for two and a half hours just to buy a cheeseburger for 60 cents.

It's that good.

I may stop at the La Mirada Theater box office and pick up my extra tickets after lunch, assuming Doug can decide on which show he is willing to sit through.

Sunday is a day of writing again. I hope to be able to write for maybe ten pages. Ten pages would be a really nice start into the chapter.

Not a very busy weekends as weekends go for me. But, still, I will be active and out of the house for part of the weekend. Maybe if the weather cooperates, I will be able to smoke one of the new cigars while I read one of the books the Princess got me for my birthday.


Be well and stay happy.

Vendor Presentations

Vendor Presentations
We are having vendor presentations at the office this week. We had the first one today and have two more this week. The first one was fairly impressive and they seemed to hit all of the numbers and they drove some long balls out of the baseball stadium, unlike Barry Steroids lately.

We were going to have four presentations but the fourth vendor seemed to continually keep shooting themselves in their collective feet. I was about to recommend that we drop them from consideration when the COO [Chief Operating Officer] showed me a news release this morning that said the company was going to be late with its 2005 audited financial statements and lost over $186 million at least.

That was certainly unsettling to me.

Then, I discovered the company has been hit with eight class action lawsuits in March and April of this year. The lawsuits are alleging a variety of securities law violations.

The COO and I decided to quietly drop this vendor from the competition.

Doug’s phone call
I had a phone call from Doug last night.

Getting a phone call from Doug is certainly not unusual, otherwise notable, or remarkable. He calls me regularly and I call him as well.

Last night, he was calling to vent and rage about his teacher who gave him a 97 out of possible 100 points on his term paper. Now, to his mother and me, we both felt that was a fine grade and that he was getting upset over nothing.

After all, life is too short for warm beer and cheap cigars. They are both evil.

Doug felt he should have received a 100 out of 100 possible points.

I asked him why he was grade down. He said that his children’s television program concept did not have a female lead character. I pointed out to him that I had suggested that he ought to add a female character during one of my draft reviews. Then, I pointed out that probably more than half of the class would kill for a grade of 97 on their term papers.

I guess my brilliant argument logic won him over; either that or the fact that there was going to be no sympathy from his mother or me over the term paper grade. Doug dropped the matter and then we talked about blog traffic.

Sharon
Sharon phoned me twice since my last blog posting.

Sharon phoned last night to tell me that she had a long conversation with the head of Human Resources at the killer job I found for her. She was excited because the HR person agreed with my assessment that she would be perfect for the position. I wished her well because it would be perfect for her plus it is only a ten minute or less drive from her home.

She called me again tonight just before I had my dinner.

Sharon said she had been terminated from her job today. The reasons that were given by her evil boss sounded flimsy to me and I suggested that she might want to talk to an employment law attorney because there may be grounds for a lawsuit based on age and racial discrimination. These are always unfortunate and ugly events.

Our phone call was a short one because she had another call. I am used to being pushed aside for someone else on the other line. The Princess used to do that all of the time when she had call waiting. I will call Sharon later on tonight and encourage her.

Being the optimist, I can find something good out of all of this. To me, it is not a question of whether the glass is half full or half empty but rather where is the person with the water pitcher.
I would expect her health to improve since the stress of the terrible job and evil boss have been removed; better health is always a plus. She can rest and regain her strength and positive attitude. Sharon will probably add a pound or two now that the stress is gone and this is not too bad.


So gentle readers, now you have seen the highpoints in my day. As you can plainly read, I did not have an exciting day.

Be well and stay happy.

Monday's Droppings

Monday’s Droppings
I don’t have a lot of profound thoughts today. This may end up as a short or may be a longer blog posting. One never knows how much or how little I will write.

Visitors, Foreign and Domestic
The visitor count seems to have picked up last week. I could attribute the upswing in visitors to brilliant and witty writing on my part [doubtful] or the addition of interesting photos [probably]. If I had to say, I think it was the addition of the Babe of the Moment section.

We had six foreign visitors this last week; two were from France, one each was from India, Israel, Australia, and Singapore. I can’t recall a week where we had two French visitors. Of course, my memory isn’t what it used to be so I could be mistaken on the French visitors.

So far, the overall visitor count is up and we should have an excellent month for blog traffic.

All of you gentle readers out there; give yourself a pat on the back.

Weather
It is still the May Gray season. The sun was in and out of the clouds all morning long at work. By this afternoon, it had come out for good and that was nice. I don’t think it will be all that warm at my place near the ocean today. I think 70F/21C is about the warmest it will be today.

Chuckay Event
I was talking to Doug after I threw Sunday’s blog posting up for all of the world to read. I was planning another Chuckay Event.

I am out of cigars; I smoked my last one yesterday afternoon while I was reading a biography of Stonewall Jackson. I am alternating between reading the biography and reading the books the Princess got me for my birthday. It is a nice change of pace to go from humorous fiction to historical biography.

I am planning to drive to San Diego 125 miles/200 kilometers on Saturday to visit the Cuban Cigar Factory where they hand roll my cigars and buy a box that will hodl me for the rest of the year. The hand rolling provides a better cigar and smoke in my mind. It also means that no two cigars are close to being alike.

I asked him if wanted to join me for lunch on my way back to Redondo Beach. I thought we could either go to Albertacos or to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster. Doug said he was ready for that.

The real question is will Doug be up and out of bed by the time I roll into South Orange County.

Since I have found out how to add photos to the blog, I thought some of you might want to see what a No. 8, from Albertacos looks like. A No. 8 has two soft beef tacos, rice, and beans. I usually add extra chopped tomatoes, onions, and seasoning to mine.



Being fair and equal in my food reporting, I also decided to show you all what an Original Tommy’s Mega Combo Chili Cheeseburger looks like. A Mega Combo is three slices of beef, three slices of cheese, tomato slice, chopped onions, and of course chili. It is a meal that should be eaten infrequently, very infrequently.



And,this is what the chili fries look like.



This month is Tommy’s sixtieth anniversary month. They are rolling back the prices to what they charged sixty years ago but only for today, I think, and only at the original location at Rampart and Beverly in downtown Los Angeles. As much as we like Tommy’s, I think the travel distance and the crowds make sense to pass on the trip downtown today.

Babe of the Moment
Those of you who are regular Skeet Shooters know Doug likes to feature much younger women in his Babe of the Week section. I can understand why he would want to go with a younger age Babe of the Week. That, plus he has the time to maintain multiple blogs and postings.

Just because a woman is over thirty does not mean that she is over the hill and therefore not worthy of a Babe of the [insert your own time period] mention. Older women are often nicer to be with since they know what is happening and they understand the game. There is no confusion with one side wanting to play basketball and the other side wanting to play soccer [football].

According to her biography information at imdb.com, Sharon Tay will turn the big four zero in October. Based on the most recent photos, I would say forty is a very nice age.

Haruku 17
Haruku 17 is the name of the current Asian serial that I am watching on television. The show is on Sunday evenings from 9:00 to 10:00 PM. It is in Japanese with unusually good subtitles. Subtitling does not extend to the commercial and that is a benefit since I can watch the commercial and not care what the product or service is about.

Last night was Episode 9. I learned that the broadcaster is changing the Sunday night show on May 28th. I am now wondering what will become of the show. Will it just end at Episode 10 next week or will it shift to a new time slot?

It is certainly not like the Korean historical dramas that I have watched in the past where they went on for over 100 episodes.

I did check my local television guide to see if the broadcaster had another time slot available for Haruku17. There wasn’t any except the late 16th century samurai series on Saturday night that i also watch. I just don’t see a series set in current times about a young Japanese model being popular enough to knock out a historical samurai action drama. If I were a betting beach guy, I would put most of my chips on the guys with weird topknots, baggy clothes, and swords.

Women’s Fashions
As most of you know, I am an observer of women’s fashions. It is difficult not to be when there are cosmetics classes going on in the building. The coz class girls always seems to dress at the edge or beyond the edge of fashion, each one seeming to try to out dress her fellow students.

I did notice two fashion trends or maybe they were just data points along the hemline of life this morning.

I noticed there were a number of young women who were wearing high, just below their knees, tight fitting boots with high heels today. This is something that I have always felt was overlooked by young women in Southern California; probably because it is always warm here and there is little rain and no snow. Women wore these boots from October through to May at the University of Utah where I went to school as an undergraduate.

Those were good days for me. My college girlfriend used to wear miniskirts and boots all winter long; excellent.

I was struck with their choice of outfits though. Most were wearing long shorts that came almost to their knees. I suppose there is a reason for this combination; maybe Doug can explain it to me when have lunch on Saturday.

Doug was right is his belief that shorty shorts are the ideal Summer outfit for a young woman. One of the coz class girls was wearing black shorty shorts and high heeled black sandals. It was the perfect Southern California Summer outfit. She topped it off with a black camisole top.

I was so distracted by the shorty shorts that I barely noticed the large tattoo she had across the front of one of her ankles.


It was a good day for me. I hope your day was good as well.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Weekend Update
I hope you all had a Happy Mothers Day on Sunday, at least, those of you who are in the United States and a few other countries.

I spent the day relaxing and working on the dissertation.

Babe of the Moment
I was doing some more dissertation research this weekend. This is no surprise at all. I took a break and looked up the current Babe of the Moment, Sharon Tay.

I learned why she is no longer on MSNBC. Her two shows got canceled in December 2005. I guess that is life. I was unable to find out what she is doing now. I would guess that she is out looking for a new show or a new job. I hope she is able to land a new show so that I can follow her again. It certainly seems like MSNBC made a bad judgment when they took her off of the air.





I also found some newer and probably better photos of her. I think these came from the Razor magazine. The one in the Babe of the Week section is somewhat dated but she still looks about the same. I guess Asian women do age better than Western women or Sharon Tay did in this case.

Sigma Beta Delta
This is a photo of me with my membership certificate from Sigma Beta Delta, the international business school honor society. I should add the certificate is very suitable for framing. When I get my doctoral degree, I will take all five of my degrees, my one banking school certificate, and the Sigma Beta Delta certificate in for frames. They should all look very consistent.



All I need is some wall space to hang them. As it is, I am out of wall space at home and I have five or six paintings and etchings that are sitting on the sidelines because there is no space for them. A good chunk of my free wall space went away when I started collecting DVDs in earnest and began storing them in tall wall units.

Dissertation
I only wrote seven pages this weekend. This was slightly below my goal of ten to fifteen pages. On the flipside, I was able to find about thirty more reference articles including some that concern a key element of my dissertation dealing with customer acceptance of electronic service delivery methods.

On balance, I am satisfied with the weekend’s results.

I know this all sounds completely dull and boring to almost everyone who reads the blog. It is very important to me because the doctoral degree will allow me to teach business classes at the university level. This is my post-full time employment plan. I suppose that some of you are scratching your heads in disbelief. Why would anyone want to continue to work after retirement?

Well, there are the obvious answers. Everyone needs a few extra dollars now and then. I want to give back some of what I have learned in business to the next generation of business leaders. And, as I told the Princess, I want to be able to go into a meeting [classroom] and have people pay attention to what I have to say for a change of pace.

Bar-Be-Que
My first bar-be-que of the season went very well last night. I managed to cook everything without burning anything. I kept the smoke volume to a lower than usual level so my neighbors will not get too upset with me.

Last night, I had a steak and half of a baked potato with fat free sour cream and herbs; very tasty. I had a slice of chilled cantaloupe for dessert. I think that was a healthy meal for me. Usually, I end up going to Fatburger for a cheeseburger and French fries.

Tonight, I will have a couple of small chicken thighs, the other half of the potato and a sliced tomato. Dessert will be another slice of chilled cantaloupe.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon, not to be confused with Sharon Tay, called me twice over the weekend.

One call, on Saturday, was not the most ego building of all calls in the world for me. Sharon was stuck in traffic so she called me because she was bored. She was on her way to pick up a friend. It was one of those “what have you been doing? I hate my boss, I hate my job, what’s the weather like? how’s your mother doing?” calls for Sharon. I just usually listen and grunt periodically to show that I am still awake. We talked for about twenty minutes which is a long time for a cell phone call for us.

I learned that it was very hot where she was; probably around 85F/30C or warmer. That was not the best place to be on Saturday afternoon. In contrast, the beach was very nice; it was around 73F/22C and there was a light, steady breeze blowing off of the ocean all day long.

Sharon called me this afternoon to ask me a writing question about how to phrase something. I thought about if for a moment or two and gave her my ideas. She liked them and decided to use them in her project.

I felt sorry for Sharon because she was calling me from her office. Being in your office on a Sunday is bad enough to start with; being there on Mothers Day is worse. I certainly hope she finds a new and much better job soon.

Birthday Gifts
I finished reading one of the books the Princess got me for my birthday. It was a very enjoyable and easy read for me.

I also watched the Woody Allen film, MATCH POINT, also from the Princess. I liked the film but I am not certain that it is one of Allen’s best films. It is a fine film and I would encourage anyone who has not seen it to consider renting it.

I take that back. If you like films with exploding buildings, barrels of fake blood, car chases, zombies, and other forms of violence, this is not the film for you, at all.

I also watched SAMURAI 7 VOLUME 1. This is a serialized anime cartoon version of Akira Kurosawa’s great classic, SEVEN SAMURAI. Since this is an anime, it is set in the post apocalyptic future. I really enjoyed the cartoons. I will probably acquire the other volumes in the series. I will admit it was a little difficult at first to get used to the showing of the opening and closing credits with each of the four episodes that were on the DVD.

Coz Glass Girls
It was cosmetics class on Friday at the office building.

I was treated to the now usual showing of unusual chair coloration patterns and styles. I am now used to seeing blue and red streaks or highlights in an otherwise head of dyed blonde hair. I am fairly comfortable that, in this case, it was dyed blonde hair; I have not seen that many Asian American women with naturally blonde hair.

Doug and I are big fans; make that very big fans of shorty shorts and low cut jeans on women.

I do think that women who wear low cut jeans and pants need or duty or obligation to the rest of us to pay some attention to the fact that whatever they are wearing underneath the pants may creep up and so itself to the world. Case in point, a young coz class girl was chit chatting away on her cell phone while she sat on the bench outside of my office on Friday morning. There is nothing remarkable about this. Moving on, when she stood up, I was on the phone in the office talking to a vendor about making a presentation next week and looking out of the window while the vendor drowned on and on. I was just not prepared to see the top two or three inches of her animal skin colored panties showing themselves over the top of her black pants.

This was not a great first impression or last impression at all for me. She reminded me of a plumber who is unable to keep his pants up; you see more than you ever want to see in your lifetime when he bends over to work. This was more than I wanted to see on Friday for sure and certain.


And, so gentle readers, that was my weekend. I hope your weekend was as good if not better than mine.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update and Modest Milestone

Weekend Update and Modest Milestone
In addition to this being the regular Weekend Update edition of the blog, this blog is also a modest milestone of sorts. It is my 300th blog posting. I had sort of hoped that I could have done a bigger celebration for the milestone.

But, you know with my on-going frustration with my inability to post more photos and how that has become an almost obsession with me, I just ran out of time to create something exciting.

Alright gentle readers, celebrate appropriately amongst yourselves. No drinking and driving and remember to buckle up.

This is going to be a low level activity weekend for me.
I am doing some laundry and a little cleaning over the weekend. If I do a little cleaning work each weekend, I ought to be able to keep the place looking really nice.

On the other hand, why do the cleaning since I am the only one here?

The dissertation is the big event of the weekend. I hope to be able to write between 15 and 20 pages this weekend.

I think I will kick off the bar-be-que season on Saturday. I will fire up the old grill and toss on some steaks and some chicken pieces. I will cook up a week’s worth of meals in one sitting; all that I will have to do for my subsequent dinners is to microwave a potato and make a salad. Then, I am done.

If all goes really well, I may go to the movies although I haven’t an idea of what to watch. I suppose I could phone Doug and ask for his advice. The Younger [and only] Brother highly recommend UNITED 93 when he saw it on the opening weekend.

Not a very exciting weekend is it now gentle readers.

My Frustration de Jour
Doug called me this afternoon to let me know he would be sending me a copy of his SOUTH PARK film term paper. I said that I would give it a quick turnaround and get it back to him as soon as I could. This should be an easy read since it is only five pages all of which are doubled spaced and it is based on an outline that I liked in terms of its structure and his professor liked in term of structure and content.

We got to talking about my frustration de jour. Doug came up with an idea that seems to explain some of the trouble in a logical and, therefore, plausibly deniable manner. Doug wondered if there was a problem with my file size. He thought that maybe my photo files were too large.

It did make a lot of sense to me. I said I would try to resize the images that I wanted to upload into a small version and then see if I could successfully upload the photos. I can always return the photos to their original image size later on.

Doug's suggestion worked. This is a photo of the Prelude, my favorite car to drive and the one that Doug learned to drive in.



This is Prelude's odometer turning over to 333,333.3 miles on Saturday on my way to the Chuckay Dinner at Morton's.



My weekend just got so much better for me.


Be well and stay happy.

Plodding Along

Plodding Along
Doug sent me some information on how to get my photos to appear in the blog yesterday. It was very useful stuff. I was able to have Blogger.com upload the photos and then they disappeared. I couldn’t find them anywhere and I looked all over the site.

I will try some more options over the weekend and then go ahead with my plans to add Doug to the team.

Adding Doug to the team would be a challenge for those of you who are not regular Skeet Shooters and therefore not at all used to his own unique style of writing and spelling. The Skeet Shooters would be very comfortable with it since they have been reading it for months now.

Marketing and My Diet
I went to the market the other day on my home from work. It was one of those “I have to go to the market because I am about out of food in the place” trips.

I indulged myself and allowed myself to buy two personal size pizzas for dinners. Being the good dieter, I checked out the carbohydrates per serving and the label said only about 30 grams. That was very nice.

Then, when I had just tossed one into the oven to cook, I read the label a little more closely. It said there were three servings in this one personal size pizza. There was no way this would serve and fill up three people. That meant that one pizza had 90 grams of carbohydrates and that just made me so MAD.

I guess that I learned my lesson to read the labels completely before throwing down some good money on the food.

I have not been eating terribly well this week so far. The office had a meeting over the weekend and the office refrigerator was full of tasty leftover food. Today, I sampled a thick slice of chocolate cake. It was so yummy. I did balance off the cake with a salad for lunch so I think I came out even at the end of the day. The food should be gone by tomorrow and so will any temptations.

On the plus side, I have taken my belt in another notch so I must be losing weight.

Odds and Ends
I noticed that we had one visitor to the blog this week who stopped by and read for almost 24 minutes the other day. That was unusual.

If you are going to stop by for almost 24 minutes, why not leave me a comment and let me know what I wrote that was so interesting to you. It would be nice to know. I do read all comments and respond to those that are not spam comments.


Anyway, gentle readers, tomorrow we have the weekend preview and then the weekend of writing mostly for me.

Be well and stay happy.

Frustrations

Frustrations
I use Earthlink.net as my internet service provider. I have their DSL product, which is way over priced and under supported. The signal is carried over Verizon copper wire to my place.

Verizon has always had crummy service in my general area. I can remember when I moved to the beach 35 years ago that my friends told me the local phone company sucked. I didn’t necessarily believe them but over the last ten years, since I have been online, I have grown to agree with them.

My latest frustration is not being able to upload the Prelude photos from yesterday. I tried again this afternoon and no success whatsoever. Every time I tried I ran into a server not found error message.

I was able to upload a photo of me that I added to My Profile. I think it is a better photo of me than the one from the Chuckay Dinner at Morton’s. You can go check me out and see for yourself. The small me photo was only 37 kb or so; it went up the line fairly quickly.

I think my best available solution is to add Doug and a team member so he can post the images for me. Of course, this is only a temporary solution. Another solution might be to copy the photos on a diskette and upload them over the T1 line at the office. The photos could be saved as a draft post so I could edit them later on. That solution is more permanent but it is also more cumbersome.

I had a phone call during my dinner one day last week from Verizon. They always seem to call during dinner don’t they? To make matters worse, the “Do Not Call List” does not apply to them. That really upsets me.

Controlling my emotions and my overwhelming desire to scream profanities into the receiver, I listened the sales drivel. The sales clown said that Verizon was better than my current carrier.

I said, “Oh really? How is that?”

The sales clown said that Verizon had superior technology and service. The sales clown also said some more stuff that made little sense to me.

I asked the sales clown, “How is your service so superior since you are using the same copper wire to run the final signal to my laptop? How is your service so superior since you are using the same phone company central office to switch the packets?”

The silence was deafening, even on this crummy circuit. I could have heard Sprint’s pin drop.

I finally broke the silence by saying why don’t you call me back when you have a really good answer for me.

I’m still waiting for a phone call.

Pants and Skirts
I noticed a cosmetics student in the courtyard this morning. It was hard not to notice her. I was in the middle of a dull conference call that was going nowhere.

I take that back.

Actually, it was going somewhere but the final destination was not what I or my client wanted to have happen. I think Doug would have called it the dénouement in the story line.

The sales person was being told by the technical and back office people who would have to make project work that it wasn’t going to happen. What the sales person had said was possible no longer was so; in fact, it was more like “it’ll never happen.”

Now, all I have to do is find a nice way to push all of the failure blame on the other party; that should not be too difficult for me.

Anyway, back to the coz student.

She was out there with some of her classmates for their smokers’ break. She was a smoker so that did not score many points with me. If I were to overlook the smoking, she would have interesting enough for me to want to spend some time with her.

But, what I had trouble dealing with and difficult moving along from was the fact that she was wearing long loose fitting black pants under a short red skirt. That costume made no sense; it certainly wasn’t cool or even cold at the beach today. Judging from the skimpy clothes that her classmates were dressed in or perhaps not dressed in, I am guessing the training room did not double as a frozen food storage locker.

I spoke to Doug later on and asked him about this fashion statement since he is also a more than casual observer of young women’s fashions. He takes long walks across campus when he is at school. It’s a long story and I won’t bother you with it.

Doug said that this fashion style was not new and that it has been around for a while. He had no explanation for the trend; it said it just happened and that he was already over it. Doug has moved on to shorty shorts which seem to make a much better argument, especially here in Southern California at the beginning of Summer.

I have my own theories why the coz student was wearing pants under her skirt.

I think she was covering up some really bad tats that she didn’t want anyone to see. One of my alternative theories is that she just had a bunch of tats put on her legs very recently and her legs are not ready for prime time viewing yet. The third theory is purely a Southern California theory; the coz student has no tan and was afraid to be seen with really pale skin.

Personally, I can find all three of theories plausibly deniable and therefore somewhat valid.


That was my day gentle readers. Perhaps I will get lucky tomorrow and the network gods will smile on my attempts to upload photos into the blog.

Be well and stay happy.

New Feature

New Feature
The blog has a new feature that I have tentatively tilted BABE OF THE MOMENT. I got the idea from Doug’s blog’s where he features the Babe of the Week. I think I went with a longer duration because I am more mature; he also gets more visitors in a day than I will get in a month.

This new feature is found at the very bottom of the blog page. I thought I had lost the sidebar section and asked Doug to help me find it so you will have to scroll down a whole bunch of space. Doug said it has to do with the blog template and monitor screen size; he has a wide screen monitor and Dad does not.

The first BABE OF THE MOMENT is Sharon Tay. As you can see, Sharon is Asian-American. I’m not sure why I picked her as the first; it just seemed like a good choice. After all, someone has to be first so why not Sharon.

I first saw Sharon when she was an assignment reporter for a local television station’s news program in Los Angeles. She was standing across the street from the building where my office was located. I think she was taping the closing to a story she had made in the office building. It was a warmish day in Southern California and I remember her as being uncomfortable in the sun. Her hair was probably wilting.

Sharon moved on from being an assignment reporter to being the co-host of the station’s early morning news – conversation – traffic – weather news broadcast. It was on from 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM, Monday through Friday. She must have had a rather hellish life, probably getting up at 3:00 AM to get to the station in time for makeup and preparation time.

I woke up early just so I could see her. Of course, I also had time to plan my drive to work and avoid the really bad traffic spots. I can still remember watching the initial September 11th news coverage with her doing the hosting. I was very impressed with her ability to remain in control and report in a calm, professional, and deliberate manner.

A couple of years ago, she left Los Angeles to host a weekend entertainment program for MSNCB in New York. For some reason, MSNBC added a New York blonde to the program and that lost me. I think it also lost the viewers because I have not seen her on the MSNBC channel in a couple of months, maybe even longer.

The photo came from her official web site, www.sharontay.com. There are more photos there for those of you who need to have more Sharon Tay to view.

Prelude
As many of you know, I love to drive my 1989 Honda Prelude. I was going to put up a photo of the Prelude here along with a photo of the odometer. As you can see, I had no success; I even asked the Big Guy for some help and Doug came up with out any success either. My problem is probably in a setup somewhere.

I did go through the photo upload process at blogger and then the photos seemed to disappear

I thought you would like to see what it looks like. The photo was taken on this past Sunday, after the Chuckay Dinner at Morton’s. Normally, I would have had the car washed for a dinner at Morton’s; but, since I was going alone, there was no reason to wash it. I know how nice it looks when it is clean.

That is my odometer on the Prelude. The car hit 333,333.3 miles or 536,448 kilometers on Saturday as I was driving to Morton’s. Somehow, 536,448 kilometers is not very exciting sounding.

Clarification
My friend Sharon that I have written about often in these blogs is not Sharon Tay. I don’t want to confuse or mislead anyone now.


That was my uneventful day gentle readers. I hope you enjoy the occasional use of photos in the blog.

Be well and stay happy.

Making Some Progress Now

Well, I am making some progress now. I have a photo from Saturday night at Morton's up. But, I do wonder what happened to my side bar section. I will have to ask Doug to see if he can give me a suggestion or two to fix things.

Doug said it is easy to post photos and it is. He just never explained to me what to do when the side bar disappears.

Yo, Doug.

Weekend Update

Morton’s
Doug and I went to Morton’s on Saturday night for our annual Chuckay Dinner celebration.

We had hoped that Amy would be working last night. Unfortunately, she was not there again. We had a new server Lily and we both liked her. Lily has a good sense of humor and that is always a winner. We decided that Amy would be our Bartolo Colon as a starting server and that Lily could be the Frankie Rodriguez coming out of the bullpen as the relief server. You have to understand that Doug is a big Los Angeles Angles [of Anaheim] fan.

Anyway.

Doug had his usual sliced tomato salad. I tried something new; I had a chopped salad and it was excellent. Lily said it was larger than most of the other salads and that was fine with me since I had planned to have leftovers for my dinner on Sunday. Now, I had my salad.

I had a large filet mignon and a large west Australian lobster tail. That left plenty of food for Sunday night. Doug always makes a point that it is a west Australian lobster tail and not from Botany Bay where all of the transported English and Irish criminals landed in the early 19th century. Doug went with a Porterhouse steak and a small lobster tail.

Epic meals.

We finished off our dinners with the Morton’s signature hot chocolate Godiva cake with vanilla ice cream; always a perfect end to an excellent meal. Since it was my birthday and getting invited to join the business school honors society, I had two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Nice Guy Chuck
I also ordered a Morton’s prime rib dinner to go for Doug’s mother since she was not there. It will last her for two or possibly three meals.

Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to Me.

Today is my birthday and I celebrated by sleeping in and then going about the day like always. I did break my personal best record for consecutive days alive this morning and I felt mighty good about that.

Visitors to the Blog both Foreign and Domestic
We only had four foreign visitors to the blog in the past week. They were from the United Kingdom, Egypt, South Korea, and Australia. I am guessing that the visitor from Egypt was probably lost and surfaced here by accident.

I took another look at the April visitor count totals and it seems you did better than I had originally thought. We had about 235 or so visitors and that was a few more than we had in March even though March had one extra day. We had one visitor from last week stop by for an astounding ten minutes of page viewings on Monday and, on last Tuesday, one visitor checked out thirteen pages of my scribblings.

I wonder what was so interesting in Monday’s blog or my rantings for that matter.

Donut Friday and Office Birthday Celebration
The first Friday of the month is Donut Friday. This is where I buy donuts for the staff in the office where I am working. I have been doing this since 1988 and it has become a habit for me. I picked up a dozen donuts on my way into the office this morning just like usual and thought nothing of it.

For the record, I had a chocolate bar and it was yummy.

The office staff celebrated my birthday as a surprise. They decorated the donut box with candles because they couldn’t tell me to not bring donuts in since that would have been a celebration dead give away. Some of the candles were the kind that you can’t blow so that was a joy to deal with.

The company president thanked me for bringing in the birthday donuts. Everyone laughed except those who were eating their donut.

At my age, I am well past the point of celebrating birthdays with all of the fuss and stuff.

Excitement at the Office
We had a moment of excitement at the office on Friday morning. Someone had been out flying a radio controlled toy plane and subsequently lost control of it. It flew into our building and crashed to the courtyard floor below just outside of where I work.

I think it made more noise than cause any damage. I couldn’t see any broken windows on any of the upper floors. It appeared to be made of plastic. I do suppose whoever was sitting near the window where the plane hit probably was scared and mostly likely upset.

The building security guard took his leisurely time to go investigate fallen plane. I think it took him maybe seven or eight minutes to walk the five yards / meters through the building door and investigate what had struck the building.

I was certainly glad that it was nothing serious.

Friday Evening Grumblings
Everyone once in a while I need to get my grumblings off of my chest. This is a short ranting about things that have upset me lately.

I drive a small car almost all of the time. A Honda Prelude is barely large enough for two adults and maybe two small children with very short legs. It is a compact car, no doubt about it.

There is absolutely no way on God’s green earth that a gas guzzling Ford Explorer could ever be considered a compact car; unless of course it had just been recycled and was now a very compact cube of steel and other metals.

So why then does [pick you own favorite pejorative adjective or adjectives] driver park his monster truck in a compact space? Could the driver not see that letters on the pavement that said “COMPACT”? The driver, of course, could have been a product of the Los Angeles City School system. Did the driver not understand that the truck was not now nor would it ever be a compact vehicle? Could the driver not see that the whale of a truck could not fit within the painted lines on the pavement?

And people wonder why they find their vehicles vandalized in parking lots. Maybe if you exercise care and a little thought your car might not be vandalized by having the car scratched.

My other grip tonight is with the evil trolls and gnomes of Redmond, Washington. You may know these people as Microsoft workers.

I downloaded the latest version of MSN Messenger 7.5X tonight. It was a featured download on my weekly email from Microsquash about new downloads and program updates.

Foolish me, I thought I was getting a newer and better version of Messenger.

Surprise. Surprise.

It screwed up my laptop. I played with fixing it and finally decided after thirty minutes that the prior version would work just fine and dandy for me.

True, I would not have all of benefits of being able to watch movie trailers on it. I have Windows Media Player and it shows movie trailers just fine. My Quick Time from Apple also does an excellent job of showing movie trailers.

So, tomorrow morning after I read the paper and have my breakfast, I will go back to an earlier Restore Point and reset the laptop. That seems like a simple and more elegant solution than tearing my hair out in frustration.

All of this goes to prove what one of my mentors said thirty years ago, there is not much benefit in being an early adapter of any new technology. Being third or fourth is sometimes a better place to be. Let someone else be the guinea pig or laboratory test rat.

I did run a restore point operation on Saturday morning. This reset the software and it seems to have solved my troubles with MSN Messenger.

Job Searching & Interviewing
I was talking with the president of the company where I am currently working about some of my current projects when he wandered off track and talked about the search for his replacement.

He said things were not moving along as fast as he would prefer and he observed that his final day was still approaching at the same speed. He gave his retirement notice a month ago and said the selection committee for his replacement was going to get organized next week and maybe select a search firm to help them with the selection process.

I thanked him for the update and asked him how many days did he have until he retired. He immediately gave me the number so I guess he is ready to retire. I think I will probably be that way when I do decide to stop working a full schedule, whenever that is.

I got an email from the chair of a credit union where I applied for their vacant president’s position. It was nice to be told, eventually, that they had selected someone else. It was nice to get a close out.

I will send the chair an email asking if I could submit a proposal for a job to facilitate a planning session for them. They need an independent facilitator to help smooth out the rough edges and move the “vision thing” building process along. I know their new president is going to want to change things; every new president does that. Some changes can be minor and some can be major.

I was like that when I first became a credit union president.

Of course, once you help to create the plan, it is very good to be brought the next year to help with the plan reviews and discussions of the future. Soon enough, it becomes an annuity with the third weekend in October being devoted to a full planning session with the client credit union in a very nice Southern California resort area.

Sigma Beta Delta
This is the international business, management, and administration honors society that I joined on Sunday. Actually, there were about thirty of the students who were eligible; this includes students who are undergraduates, in the master’s, or doctoral degree programs.

We are the initial membership group of the society at the school. I think that is a modest distinction for me.

The Dean of the school was there for the installation proceedings. It was nice that they were short and semi-informal. I was just not in the mood for something long winded and drawn out on a Sunday morning after a big dinner at Morton’s.

The Dean also asked for the students to form their own slate of officers and organize the chapter at the school. I decided that I did not need any more leadership experience under my belt. I have served as an officer of Marines in the Marine Corps Reserves. I have worked at the C-level in corporations for almost fifteen years now. I told the Dean that I would be a strong supporter of the program but I did not want to serve in a leadership role.

I did tell the Dean that I would be willing to server on an editorial board for an online, peer reviewed, business student publication. This would be something that I could do from home and would not entail too many meetings at school.

The Blog
I am making a few changes to the blog as you have probably noticed. I think the use of the photos will help make Balancing Checkbooks a little more readable.


That was my weekend. I know I am older but I do not feel any older.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
This is mostly a short, weekend preview edition because I had a slow and uneventful day today.

I saw the B-17 again this morning. It made me feel good to see it flying.

On Monday, many immigrants, legal and illegal, were protesting American immigration laws and organizing boycotts against American business interests. I am boycotting any celebration on May 5th.

The only reason the Mexicans were able to kick French out of their country was because the Americans told the French of leave or face a war with the United States. With over a million men under arms in the Union army and with five years of hard campaigning from the Civil War and a larger navy, the French turned and ran back to Paris.

Saturday is the big Chuckay Event, the traditional Morton’s with Doug. In the past, we have usually held it in July when the Princess comes out to California for her vacation. Since her mother and Doug are visiting her in Atlanta this Summer, her travel plans to the Coast are still up in the air.

Doug and I decided to go ahead with the dinner. After all, we had two very good reasons; Chuckay and Doug made the Dean’s List again for the Fall 2005 semester. Doug also pointed out that we can always go to Morton’s again if the Princess comes out to the Coast; there are no bad times to go to Morton’s.

Going to Morton’s means I will have to miss my new Japanese historical serial on the tube. Since it is only at episode 10 or 12, I think I can pick it up easily enough. These programs tend to move slowly. I will be able to survive the loss of the program.

Doug says I should get a DVR so I would not have to worry about missing the program. I am uncertain if I want to do that because once you start recording programs, you have to find time to watch the recorded shows. Time is limited on the weekends for me.

I have a meeting at school for the installation of the campus business school's honor society on Sunday. Your humble scribe had good enough grades to get invited to be one of the original members.

Some things never cease to amaze me.

I will also be writing this weekend. I hope to get maybe fifteen or twenty pages in the file by the time I hit the Save button for the last time on Sunday night.

I found a great job for Sharon today. It is perfect for her and her skills and experience. It is also perfect because it is a ten minute drive from her house to the office. Sharon was excited about the job when I called her.

It felt good to be Nice Guy Chuck.


Be well and stay happy.