Questions

Questions
I have a question for those of you out there who feel adventurous. I am not exactly thrilled with the title or label for the Babe of the Moment. I am looking for a new term. I asked Doug for some suggestions; he said a new name will come to me when I am ready for it.

That sounded so Yoda like.

I decided to take suggestions from the viewing audience. There is no prize or reward for submitting a new term. If you want to have your fifteen microseconds of fame, just post a reply at the end of the blog posting with your suggestion for a new title for Babe of the Moment.

[Term to be Named Later] of the Moment
The trouble with most of the Tamlyn Tomita photos that I found was that they were real thumbnails and that they just do not enlarge well at all. This photo came from the BABYLON 5 pilot episode. It was unfortunate that the producers decided to go with someone else for the role of the station executive officer in the full production run. There is always the possibility that I am wrong as to where the photo came from. One makes do with the materials at hand.



Oh well, life happens and you play the hand that you were dealt.

Doug would say, “It is what it is,” or “You have to play the ball were it lies.”

Visitors
We had a bunch of foreign visitors last week; they came from Canada [4], India [3], Germany [2], Singapore, Brazil, Sweden, United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia.

We had one visitor who spent an incredible eleven minutes reading the blog posting. That is fascinating to me.

The month’s visitor count, subject to final revision, has been 264 so far. This number actually understates the true monthly count for this month because of my problems with my new DSL service.


I know this is a small blog but yesterday was a long one and I need to rest up for the week. Plus if I write a lot, I will run out of ideas by Thursday.

Be well and stay happy gentle readers and have a great week.

Weekend Update

Babe of the Moment



The new and now current Babe of the Moment is the actress, Tamlyn Tomita. As you may recall from my previous whines, I had difficulty in finding photos of her. There is not a great deal of information about her at the Internet Movie Database [http://www.imdb.com].

All I could find was that she was born in Okinawa on January 27, 1966, making her a very attractive 40. She is untall [62 inches / 157 centimeters]. Tamlyn was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1991 and was the 1984 Nisei Week in Los Angeles. i knew that she as attractive without the other recognition.

The most compelling thing I learned, having been an indifferent History major at university, about Tamlyn was that she had been majoring in history at UCLA before leaving for show business. It is always nice to see a History major succeed.

All of this goes to show that small things can be very attractive and fascinating.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and the Prelude
I took the Prelude into the Honda dealership to have them check the transmission since it had been slipping from time to time. The news from the transmission specialist was, at various times, good, bad, and ugly.

The bad news was that my suspicions were confirmed. The transmission is starting to fail. That was a disappointment but hardly unexpected. The Prelude will be 18 years old in September. It has been driven for over 335,300 miles / 531,600 kilometers in mostly heavy traffic in greater Los Angeles. Wear and tear will happen and mechanical parts will fail eventually and have to be replaced.

The good news was that I do not have to fix the Prelude immediately. The specialist said the transmission could go on for several more years with a slip or two every month; in reality, only a minor irritation for me. It is unlikely to fail in the next few days as well. This means I can wait a bit before I fix.

The ugly news is that a remanufactured transmission will cost between $1,800 and $2,200, depending on the warranty that I buy, and an additional $500 for the labor on the job. That is real money gentle readers. The labor component seems to be almost reasonable; I said almost here.

This will give me something to think about the next time I am out on the balcony in the evening. My ideal solution would be to win a gob of money in the lottery and then buy a new car and let someone else worry about the Prelude after it is gone.

Watchless
I have been watchless now for a week and two days.

Saturday was my biggest test so far. Last weekend, I was at home so not having a watch on was not critical for me. I had my glasses on so I could read the computer clock and I could read the microwave oven digital clock so I was fine.

Yesterday, I left my glasses at home while I was at the cinema. I will be leaving them home again when I go to the cinema today. There will be more about the cinema either today or in the next couple of days. I was able to read the time display on my Verizon cell phone and I was able to read the time display on my Cingular cell phone.

It would appear that I can survive without my wrist watch for the time being.

Cinema
I went to the cinema on Saturday because the workers from the roof replacement company were here at my building, early in the morning. They were pounding, hammering, and generally being very noisy.

My condominium was no place to study and I could not read on the balcony because of the falling debris from the roof.

I saw three films weekend; two on Saturday and one on Sunday.

AZUMI



AZUMI was my Sunday film and the most enjoyable. It is a Japanese samurai – revenge film. It takes places during the waning years of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s rule. The plot line is very linear as is the case with many films of this genera. The subtitles were a very good translation that included some Western slang.







This is Aya Ueto who played the role of Azumi. The film came out in 2003 and was a success in Japan. I believe that she could have worked in MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA instead of Zyang Ziying. Aya is much shorter but that should not have been any trouble. Anyone who runs around in a scene with fake movie blood on her face has to be able to act.

Some of the sequences were a little hard to follow. In one scene, towards the beginning of the second act, the group walks into a village that is being pillaged by the local bandits. The Master tells them that they must not get involved for their mission is more important. I could accept that premise but how do they avoid dealing with the bandits since they are sort of standing there is plain view?

The film has the usual cast of characters including the old Master, the lord’s samurai body guard, assorted ninjas, one of who looks likes a monkey, and one psychotic killer, just released from prison. The psychotic killer is the one in the white.



Doug said that he felt MIAMI VICE lacked the level of action that he was expecting from a Michael Mann film. AZUMI has more than enough action. It has the requisite stylized sword fighting with flying body parts, heads, and barrels of fake movie blood. Some of the sword fighting choreography was excellent.

I really enjoyed the film and would highly recommend it to those who favor this genera. If I were awarding katanas instead of stars, I would give it 3.5 katanas.

MIAMI VICE
I saw this film first on Saturday. I think I was expecting more from the film than I got; probably because it was a Michael Mann film and his last film COLLATERAL was so enjoyable.

I did enjoy Gong Li who played the Chinese Cuban girl friend of the Columbian drug dealer. But, I have generally always liked her work.

I think Doug was right with his comments that the action level seemed to be too low for MIAMI VICE. I thought the shower scenes were gratuitous and really unnecessary plot points to establish relationships. The side trip to Havana seemed too far fetched to be believable. Wouldn’t the Cubans try to stop a boat that is approaching the island at very high speed and is coming straight from the United States? It did drag at times. The music seemed weak also.

Doug said the film reminded him of a Western and would have been better off with the music from a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western. He was right as usual. I thought the film was similar in some ways to FIST FULL OF DOLLARS.

Doug also said that Michael Mann should make a Western. I think Mann would be a perfect director for a Western. Unfortunately, the Western would probably be a stinker because the studio would force Mann to use whatever actor that was hot with the audiences in the film.

Can any of you see Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt staring in the remake of HIGH NOON or THE SEARCHERS or STAGECOACH?

I certainly can not.

I am also hard pressed to recommend this film. Certainly, I could never recommend the film at a regular priced showing of $10.50 a ticker. Thankfully, I was able to use my senior [60 and over] discount and saved $3.00. I can only recommend this film at a bargain matinee or as a video rental.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST
Considering it is now in it’s third weekend, the venue where I saw it had a larger crowd than did MIAMI VICE. Of course, attendance can be affected by many factors including time of day and weather. It is possible that MIAMI VICE will have a good box office this weekend.

The PIRATES franchise seems to be aging extremely rapidly now. I was struck that the inclusion of many of the scenes from the Disneyland ride were clear signs of creative desperation by the writers or the grossest of all product placements. The cliffhanger ending of the film is straight out of the Saturday B-level serials of the 1930s. The STAR WARS franchise had better endings that were not so limited.

This is a good film for teenagers and other young children. The plot seems too linear to be challenging for the adults. The studio has already telegraphed some of the highlights of the third film; we get to see Keith Richards play Johnny Depp’s father, assuming he lives that long, and Geoffrey Rush returns to play Captain Barbossa. There will be at least one storm at sea and of course a ship to ship battle that the pirates illogically will win.

I think I will see the third episode after I buy the DVD. That sort of sums my feelings about the franchise and that I should have seen this version after I purchased the DVD which will be available in a deluxe, boxed set at Christmas.

Nurse Joyce from University
Nurse Joyce was a young lady that I dated when I was in university during my senior year. Like the others who were getting our commissions in the United States Navy after graduation, I eagerly awaited my orders.

Sailors are meant to be on ships and ships are meant to be at sea. I had asked for sea duty on a destroyer. I figured that Joyce could handle me being gone for six to nine months on a deployment and then be with me for the next two years in the States. She even thought that would work out nicely for both of us.

Unfortunately for us, the Navy Department had other ideas. I was assigned to the good ship USS Leonard F. Mason, a destroyer that was placed in service before I was born.

I checked what my ship would be doing for the first year of active duty. One of the petty officers helped me understand the Fleet Employment Schedule. He said, “You’re sure lucky Mr. Reinhardt, your ship is in Destroyer Squadron Three.”

“What’s so good about that?”

“Well, sir, you’ll be joining the ship overseas on a deployment and then she’ll be coming back to the States for a couple of months. Then, Destroyer Squadrons Three and Nine swap home ports; they do that every two years. The Mason will be home ported in Japan for two years. Isn’t that great, sir?”

“What about a wife?”

“Nothing to worry about sir. The Navy will move your wife and belongings over with the ship. Of course, you won’t have any base housing so your wife will need to be able to get along with the locals while you are away and your ship will be at sea most of the time.”

“Oh,” I figured that this would not sit well with Joyce when I told her. We had been talking about wedding and that sort of stuff.

Joyce exploded; that was the easiest description of her reaction. It lasted for about an hour or more. In the end, Joyce said there was very little likelihood that she would be on any pier to see my ship come in or sail away.

We were toast.

On the plus side, because I can always find a plus side to almost anything, the explosion happened before Christmas so I was off the hook for a gift exchange with her.

Fast forward until a couple of months before graduation and it is shot time for the young officers to be. We all went over the Student Health Service for our shots on Friday. We were talking shots for any possible disease you can think of including cholera and plague.

It was my bad karma that Joyce was there with the other nursing students. They were looking forward to giving shots to live patients. Joyce saw me and said something like “Come here sailor, I will take good care of you.”

I think she had an alternative definition of good care than I did. My arms were sore all weekend and this was only the first series of shots; there were a total of five or six series of multiple shots with each shot session. I suffered while most of my classmates had relatively painless times. They tried to make me feel better by saying that Joyce was just making sure that I was protected while I was overseas.

I could have used less protection.

Still, I do have fond memories of Joyce and sometimes wonder what she is doing. I could Google her name but I am guessing that she got married right after graduation, long leggy blondes usually find a husband quickly, and who knows what her last name is now.

Dinner
My dinner was a Kingburger with cheese from Fatburger. It was well worth the carbohydrate overdose.




That was some of my weekend highlights. I will have some observations during the week.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
This ought to be an interesting weekend for me.

The building where I live has started a roof replacement project. I had previously thought the company would only work from Monday to Friday. I was re-reading the notice last night and discovered they will work on Saturdays. That means there will be noise and dust and pounding and all sorts of distractions. It also means that I will not get any work completed on my dissertation on Saturday.

I talked to Doug about movie choices for the weekend. He said that I only had one real choice and that was MIAMI VICE since it was directed by Michael Mann. We both like Mann’s work so that is a good choice.

I think I will catch PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN as a second film choice. After all, I am probably the only person left in America who has not seen the film.

The Honda Prelude needs to be taken in for servicing so I can get up early and attend to that and then head on off to the local cinema. I am hopeful that I can get in and out quickly from the Honda dealership. This is a problematical question that is beyond my control. I do know that if the car requires any repairs, the dealership will not have the part in stock so I will have to go back next Saturday and have the part installed. Certainly, that is not how I want to spend next Saturday.

Job Searching and Interviewing
I had a call, voice message actually, yesterday from a local bank. The recruiter had found my resume on Monster.com and wanted to talk to me about a position at the bank. I got home too late to return the call.

I phoned the recruiter this morning. The bank is looking for a lending compliance officer. This is a low stress, low excitement job. You spend your time reading federal and state laws and regulations and reviewing policies and procedures to insure the bank does not violate one of the many laws and regulations that affect loans. When you find a potential problem area, you create a solution and get everyone to buy into the solution.

But, at this stage of my life, it is an ideal job. I do not need any stress in my life. If I want excitement, I can drive on the Los Angeles Freeways and change lanes without signaling. If I need more excitement, I can find a girl friend that is emotional and is overly dramatic with everything.

One of the big pluses for the job is the location. It would be only an additional mile or two further drive for me each day. That is readily acceptable for me.

I will see how things develop here.

Weather
The local weather is moderating now. It should be close to normal for the weekend temperatures. That will be a nice change from the melting steel temperatures we have experienced lately. The beach will be pleasant and, of course, very crowded. It looks like I should stick to my plans for now.


Be well and stay happy and have a great weekend. I will be back with another Weekend Update on Sunday.

Babe of the Moment Update

Babe of the Moment Update
I had planned to put up Tamlyn Tomita the actress from THE JOY LUCK CLUB, FOUR ROOMS, and KARATE KID II as well as the television shows JAG and BABYLON 5, well the pilot episode of B5 anyway.

I would have thought that it would be a piece of cake to find photos of an actress. After all, their livelihood is based on being in the public eye so it would seem like a connect-the-dots exercise to find publicity photos all over the Internet. I figured I would get maybe a hundred thousand hits when I ran a Google search. It turns out she does not have many photos out in the Internet.

I ran a search for Tamlyn Tomita through Verizon this afternoon and it produced a grand total of 72 hits. Of course, some hits were duplicates so the actual number was lower than what I wanted to see.

I am going to give this one more try this weekend and see if I can develop enough recent photos for a workable Babe of the Moment series in the coming weeks. Being the competent planner that I am, I have a backup plan to consider Lucy Liu as the next Babe of the Moment. I am highly confident that Lucy Liu has lots of photos all over the Internet.

Courtyard
Since the weather has been so warm lately, the number of smokers in the courtyard has declined to almost nothing now. I guess they are fair weather smokers. But, that is fine with me; the weather is in a cooling trend now and should be back to normal by next week. What I do not understand is why so many of the smokers are young people who presumably should know about the dangers of smoking. I do not understand why they are going out and intentionally taking on a risk of cancer.

Watchless
I have gone watchless for four days now. I do not feel less stressful now. I am getting out of the habit of looking at my watch for the time. For the most part, I can live with out the watch. Since I wear glasses to work on the computer, I can easily read the time in the corner.

But, I will have to wear the watch on the weekends since I can not read the time on my cell phones without the glasses. The cell phones are my portable time pieces when I am not near a computer or large clock. The hands of the watch are big enough for me to figure out what the time is fairly closely.


Be well and stay happy.

Presentation Disappointment
The vendor I have been working with for my client made a presentation to the Board of Directors tonight.

Normally, this is just so much routine work and there is usually nothing to be concerned about. I did review and approve the presentation last week and so did one other employee. We were both pleased with the presentation. It seemed to answer all of the questions and presented the information fairly.

So, you can imagine my shock and surprise when I saw new and completely different numbers on the screen in the Directors meeting.

I was embarrassed, the other employee was embarrassed, and the president was embarrassed. It was so totally beyond me that the presenter would have changed an approved presentation without notice to me or the other employee.

The presenter made the most common mistake of all.

He failed to listen to those who know the audience best. The other employee and I know the audience. We told him what to say and how to say. I told him where to change the slides because they would cause questions as they were. He thought he knew best and as sure as the sun rises in the east, there were questions exactly about what I had told him to change and the presenter failed to come up with a satisfactory answer. Now, I have to spend tomorrow cleaning up his mess.

I could have killed I was so upset.

Well, maybe killed is a bit harsh. But, I was very upset with the presenter.

Tattoos
I think everyone by now knows I do not approve of excessive body art on women.

Today, I got caught on my own tattoo prejudices.

I saw a young lady who had way too many tats in far too many places. I know she had more tats than any of my sailors had from when I was in the United States Navy. She was wearing a low cut dress today so I could plainly see the birds that were tattooed on her chest, one on each side. I could see that she had a big tat on her back that covered almost all of it that I could see. Of course, there were lots of tats on her arms and legs.

This was clearly a young woman who had a lot on her mind or was mad at someone or something for sure and certain.

Then, I saw it.

She had a big heart and roses tat on her right calf. There was a scroll across the heart and it had the word “Daddy” in inch high block letters.

How could I not like that tat?

At least, she showed that she loved Daddy. I don’t know if Daddy loved the tat though. I guess her heart was in the right place.

Oh Princess, if you happen to read this, please do not feel compelled to go out and get a tattoo like the one I described above.

Instant Messages
I use MSN Messenger like a lot of other people. Lately, I have had a number of Chinese people want to add me to their contact list. Let me qualify that slightly, I think they are Chinese but I can’t tell for sure because Chinese, Japanese, and Korean seem to look alike to me anyway when they are typed out.

I checked their messages and I can’t read them so I delete them from any contact list. I wonder, why would some one write to a stranger in a language that the recipient is unlikely to be able to read?

That makes no sense to me.

Babe of the Moment
I had planned to put up a new Babe of the Moment today but I got bummed out by the Directors presentation. I think I will do that tomorrow when things are better.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update Errata

Weekend Update Errata
This blog posting is mostly a collection of observations and such that I did not feel like writing about in the heat of Sunday. Some of these ramblings came from the Comic Con and others are not related to Comic Con.

That certainly has to be one of my more obtuse statements in some time.

And now, on to the Errata.

Desk Calendars
I have not yet converted completely to Microsoft Outlook for my office scheduling and calendaring. I like to use an old fashioned, paper based calendar that has a week on the page when you open the calendar and lay it flat on your desk. Outlook is a good program and I suppose in another four or five years I will have converted to it completely.

I like having a nice record of what I did or who I met with that with not disappear in a server crash. Maybe my reluctance to convert is a hold over from when I was the Year 2000 Project Manager at the company I was working for when 2000 rolled around.

It seems like I have three crummy choices when it comes to buying next year’s desk calendar. Choice One is to go with the same vendor as before. This is not a great decision since I have to write the times of the day in manually on all of the pages. Clearly, this is not what I want to do.

Choice Two is to buy a calendar from Barnes & Noble that has the times already printed for the days of the week. While, this appears to be a solution to the decision I was faced with in Choice One, it is but a cruel hoax. This calendar is bound like a book and probably will not lay flat on the desk. Plus, it has a leather cover and that is more than I need. It is a simple desk calendar; I do not have to impress anyone with it.

Choice Three is to buy a calendar from Barnes & Noble that has the times already printed for the days of the week and that comes with spiral binding so that it will lay flat on my desk. It would be fine except that it starts in July 2006 and runs until the end of 2007. I end up with six months of pages that I would have to remove since I am not going to change calendars in the middle of the year.

My question is this: why can’t the calendar publishers print a simple calendar that has the times of the day, lays flat, and only covers a calendar year? It would make things easier for so many people and lot less frustration for me.

Watchless in Redondo Beach
Doug convinced me to take off my watch on Saturday. He said he was less stressed after he took his watch off.

I have been watchless since Sunday morning. It does make sense since I have multiple time displays around me without my wrist watch. I have not been watchless long enough to tell if I less stressed or not. I think it is worth a try.

Sunday was a lay about day so not wearing a watch was not very significant for me. I was more or less fine today at work. I will see how tomorrow goes for me.

Comic – Con
I learned why it was so hot at the Comic Con on Saturday. On the local television news show on Sunday evening, the weather news reader said it had been 95F/34-35C in San Diego on Saturday. This was twenty degrees or eleven to twelve degrees higher than normal. That would explain why I had heat exhaustion.

I think I mentioned that a lot of the adults were dressed in a variety of costumes. There was a heavy influence of STAR WARS and STAR TREK in the costume selection. I did see one young woman dressed up as Snow White but she was not like any Snow White from Disney. This Snow White had on a short skirt that barely covered her bottom. She was wearing platform high heeled shoes. I think the platform was a couple of inches thick and the heels were close to six inches high. I might have stopped to speak with her but I would have lost my place inline and that would have been bad. She also had a tattoo on the back of her arm between her elbow and shoulder. There was a dagger through each heart; maybe she was a closet fan of the Step Mother. The tattoos helped me move on.

Churrascaria
I have an online chat acquaintance that lives in Brazil. She contacted me first. We were chatting the other day and the topic of restaurants came up; probably in the context of Doug and me going to Morton’s Steakhouse. She recommended that we try a transplanted Brazilian churrascaria restaurant, Fogo de Chao that came from her home town. It comes with a lot of features that appeals to Doug and me; it features an all you can eat beef and a salad bar.

What more could you ask for in a restaurant?

I suggested to Doug that we go there in August. He was all for it because you can pick your pieces of meat as the servers carve it for you at your table. I pointed out that it was not as fancy as Morton’s and that was a big plus with Doug.

When we were driving to San Diego on Saturday, I suggested that we change our planned outing from the middle of August until early September. This way we could invite his friend to join us and his friend would not have to with his vegetarian girl friend. She does not approve of this sort of dining that the three of us really enjoy.

Doug thought Dad had come up with an excellent idea again.

Time will tell if it was a good idea or not.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
Doug got an extra copy of this film from the distributor when he did a review of it on his blog so he gave me a copy for my collection. For the record, Doug really enjoyed the film. I watched it on Sunday while I was resting.

This is a low budget film by Russ Meyer. The screen play was written by film critic Roger Ebert. It was originally intended to be a satire of the earlier film, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS. The only connection this film has to the earlier one is the title.

As Doug said, how can you not like a film that has nudity, sex, drugs, rock and roll, real big breasted American woman, and lesbians? I have to agree with him. It has all of that and an NC-17 rating so it is not for children. The film is a biting satire of the music and entertainment industry in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

It is not for everyone so do not rent it if nudity offends you.

Humidity at the Beach
It was very humid here on Sunday as I said yesterday. I found out just how humid it was after I posted the Weekend Update blog.

We have exposed fresh water pipes that are suspended from the ceiling in the car park of the building. These pipes are generally cool since the water lines are all buried in the ground. The moisture in the air was condensing on the pipes and dripping to the ground. There was enough moisture to create little puddles on the car park floor.

This has never happened before in the twenty years that I have lived in the building. I thought that was fascinating.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update - Thunder and Lightening

Thunder and Lightening
In a surprise for me because the weather news reader failed to mention any possibility of rain at the beach, I was jolted out of a sound nap this morning by the sound of thunder. I think there was the usual accompanying lightening but I could not see any.

It rained just enough to wet the ground and drive the relative humidity into the sky. It has been muggy and uncomfortable all afternoon. We also have no breeze as yet but I hope there will be one before too long or at least by the time that I go to bed.

My home does not have any air conditioning except for the ocean breezes. Ocean breezes are very important to me.

Babe of the Moment
This is always a good thing.



Comic Con
Programming Note: You should read Doug's version of Comic Con in his blog, SkeetonMischa that is found at http://skeetonmischa.blogspot.com.

We made it to the Comic Con more or less about when I thought we would.

Traffic was spotty on the road to San Diego so I made a minor course correction. Instead of parking at Qualcomm Stadium / Jack Murphy Field for free and then taking the light rail line into the Convention Center, I decided to drop Doug off at the Center so he would have a good chance to getting into to see the Grind House Films panel discussion with Robert Rodriguez. Then, I went back to Qualcomm Stadium and parked the Pathfinder.

It took me an hour and a half to get back to the Convention Center. By this time, Doug was inside waiting for the panel to start. I think he only waited in line for an hour.

I went into the line to do an onsite registration. It took a good fifteen minutes of walking to reach the end of the line; when I got to the end of line, I found out that I was looking at a three hour wait.

It was very hot, probably up into the 90Fs / 30Cs. Since the Convention Center is next to the bay, the sun was reflecting off of the water. Not the best weather combinations on a hot and sunny day.

It was not very good for me since I take a diuretic for my blood pressure.

After standing in the sun and occasional shade for another hour [total time was about 90 minutes], I developed a case of heat exhaustion. The diuretic coupled with my sweating essentially dehydrated me very effectively.

Oh yes, the line seemed to stop moving. This was because the wait had been calculated at an incredible four hours now.

Anyway, cutting the drama short, I found some shade and sat down to cool off somewhat.

I waited until Doug’s panel was over and called him. I told what had happened to me to bring me some water.

Doug showed up about fifteen minutes later with some very cold water which I drank immediately. This reminded me of a scene from the film GUNGA DIN where Gunga Din is the regimental water bearer and he brings water to soldiers; except that Doug has a head of curly hair and Sam Jaffe had a shaved head in the film. This rehydrated me and cooled me off so that I could walk on my own to the light rail line.

Hitting the fast forward button, we made it back to Qualcomm Stadium without me passing out. We had to sit in the shade at the Stadium station while I cooled off in the breeze. The air conditioning in the light rail car was either not functioning or woefully inadequate for the challenge of the day.

Doug drove back to his house and I just sat in the draft. I was well cooled by the time we reached South Orange County. I had some more cold water and then headed on home. I had the Pathfinder’s air conditioning on maximum until I pulled into the car park.

I did stop at Burger King and pick up a double Whopper with cheese and extra onions and tomatoes. This was my first visit to BK in at least thirteen years or more. The double Whopper tasted very good but then I was tired and hot and hungry so I think most anything would have tasted good to me.

Other things Doug and I talked about
I don’t want you to think that we had a silent conversation on the drive at all. We talked about a number of things that nothing to do with Comic Con.

Shorty Shorts



Doug said he had been talking to his friend about shorty shorts. His friend said that only Asian American women seemed to wear shorty shorts. I said there was noting wrong with that. I was able to observe, from my vantage point in the shade, that all types of women were wearing shorty shorts on Saturday at the Con.

There were even some women who should never even think about wearing shorty shorts wearing them on Saturday as well. That was not a happy view.

Asian Female Drivers
I asked Doug if he has ever noticed that sometimes you will see an Asian woman driving the car and what appears to be her husband is riding in the back seat. He said no. Maybe I see this because where I live there are a number of major Japanese company North American headquarters. I said may be the husband wants to feel important and pretend that he has a driver.

Doug said may be he doesn’t know how to drive.

After thinking about that comment for a while, I think Doug is on to something.

Doug asked me if I had seen some Asian women driving with the white cotton gloves on that go all the way up to their elbows. I said that I had only seen them with the regular gloves on. I should point out that these drivers who wear the gloves are usually older since most of the young drivers like to have a tan. Doug then went on to the visors some wear. The visor, for those of you who have not seen one, looks like a welder’s mask. It covers the face from ear to eat and down to the chin. Doug wondered why that was.

I told him that it was probably a class thing about not wanting to appear like someone who worked out in the sun; sort of a Scarlett O’Hara thing. He said that made sense.

Two women from the Con
There were these two women who were waiting along with us for the light rail car. They were with their husbands and sons [one son each]. They had the most nasally, grating, annoying sounding voices we had ever heard.

We felt so sorry for their husbands because they were married to them. I pointed out to Doug that the men had a chance to say no and they did not. The ones we should really feel sorry for were their sons.

I told Doug that I once dated a woman in college that had nasally voice but that since she was a nursing student she did know how to give me a great massage. Doug gave me a very knowing look.

Visitors
This last week was the largest foreign readership week ever in the history of the blog. We had visitors from India, United Kingdom [2], Canada [9], France [2], Texas [2], Ireland, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Japan [2], Belgium, and Nigeria.

Thoughts Missing in Action
There are a couple of ideas or thoughts that I would normally include but it is too warm to continue typing much more. I wanted to write about planning calendars and the Japanese samurai historical drama I have been watching. My college girl friend who was a nursing major. I will get to those later on in the week.


I hope you weekend was better than mine.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
This will be another of those straight forward, simple weekends for me.

Saturday is the Comic Con and Sunday is dissertation writing and some odds and ends. Simple, isn’t that now. I do have a couple of errands to run and those will be on Sunday since I will be doing Comic Con activities for almost all day on Saturday.

Babe of the Moment
Two views of the babe of the Moment, one is sitting and one is standing. You can discuss the significance of the photos among yourselves. It is a nice chair isn’t it?





I think I will be cycling in a new Babe of the Moment sometime next week as I finish off the remaining, unviewed Cora Linn photos.


Be well and stay happy and I will be back with the Sunday Weekend Update.

Something to Say

Something to Say
I actually have something to say for a change; that and an inquiring minds observation or two or maybe not.

Anyway.

Doug
The Big Guy called this morning while I was at lunch.

He wanted to let me know when he thought I should swing bye his house on my way to San Diego to go to Comic-Con to pick him up for the ride. He asked me to go with him since his friend could not change his work schedule. There are two panels that are particularly interesting to Doug and they were not at convenient times for his friend.

Life happens.

Doug thought it would be a good idea if I came bye around 8:00 AM or so.

Nice time, that means I will be out of my house by 7:00 and out of a comfortable bed around 6:00. Going to Comic-Con also means I will not be doing any dissertation writing on Saturday since I won’t be home until close to 9:00 PM, just in time to see my samurai drama.

We plan to stop at Albertacos for supper on the way back to Los Angeles. It is on the way, well just a couple blocks from the freeway exit actually. Lunch at Comic-Con will be a hit of miss proposition I think.

I am planning on taking my camera and I may have a photo or two to post in the Sunday Weekend Update.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when car parking spaces came in only one size. There were no compact or handicapped or pregnancy marked spaces. It was a free for all in the parking lot and the close in spot went to the lucky ones.

Cracked Tree in the Park
The chainsaw gods were pleased with me as they roared their rituals this morning when I was at work.

The city workers came in and cut up the cracked tree limb this morning. They did not haul the pieces away as I thought they might do. The pieces were sort of neatly stacked in a non-pile; neat enough to be orderly but not intriguing enough to be an attractive climbing nuisance for small children.

I wonder what will happen to the tree. There was no visual evidence that the city workers made an effort to finish off and otherwise clean up the jagged part of the limb that was part of the trunk. I suppose the tree may be allowed to heal itself.

Cosmetics Classes
We had more coz classes yesterday and today.

For all of their individuality, the coz class women, and the vast majority of the students are women, seem very content to wear the same uniform to work as everyone else. They wear either a black dress that may or may not fit well or black pants and a black shirt or blouse. Again, the pants and shirt of blouse may or may not fit well.

I went to the sandwich shop in the building for lunch as I usually do everyday.

It looked like a ninja training session lunch break as everyone was dressed in black with the coz class girls giggling and talking and of course test messaging. I suppose they were happy since they were like everyone else.

For the record, I had a Japanese Chicken Salad for lunch. It was made with lettuce, chicken, bean spouts, carrots – don’t ask me why, peanuts, green onions, and chow mien noodles with an alleged Asian dressing. It was tasty and filling.

Fashion Sense Part II
If you have been watching your local television newscast, you will know that it has been hot everywhere in the country.

Hot weather is uncomfortable for most people, right?

Of course it is; well, I feel that way.

I would certainly not wear a suit and tie and wing tip shoes to work if I could. I would be very happy with a business casual environment and wear casual, comfortable clothes.

So, I am wondering what would possess a coz class woman to wear black tights under a long black dress as an outfit to wear out in the sun. That sounds like an instruction manual for a human, self baking, movable oven.

On the same subject, I saw another woman who had on black pants and wore a long [middle of her calf] black dress over the pants. It made no sense to me. Of course, this style may be fashionable and it is certainly one of the hottest outfits that I can think of.

Oh yes, hottest, in this context, refers to the temperature and nothing else.

Later on in the day, this same woman happened to be sitting on the bench outside of my office for her smoke break. It was then that I noticed that her pants were not black but only brown. Brown pants under a black dress certainly were an unusual color combination.

Maybe she got dressed in the dark this morning.

Babe of the Moment Encore






I hope your day was productive and rewarding.

Be well and stay happy.

Lots of Photos Are A Sure Sign of Limited Written Content

Photos Are Sure Sign of Limited Content
Photos are a sure sign of limited written content.

I had a slow day at the office for activities. I spent the day working in financial analysis and that is incredibly boring and dull. But, it was work that had to be done and it was all billable time so I can not really complain very much. I still have another day of number crunching with an Excel spreadsheet.

A Babe of the Moment photo is always a welcome sight in the blog.



This is a photo me in front of my favorite little Honda Prelude. I will have had the Prelude for eighteen years come September. It just runs and runs and runs. One of these days, I will have to buy a new car. I think that will be in 2007 or 2008 or maybe when the Prelude’s odometer rolls over at 400,000 miles / 644,000 kilometers.



Be sure to come back tomorrow. I may actually have something to say for a change.


Be well and stay happy.

Robert Brooks

Robert Brooks



Robert Brooks died in Sunday at his home in South Carolina of natural causes. He was 69. As Chairman of Hooters, Brooks deserves to be remembered, fondly by me at least, for bringing the Hooters restaurants to America and the world. While scantily clad women will not bring about world peace, the Hooters restaurants certainly have been great places to contemplate truth, justice, and the American way of life.



Anyone who believes that “good food, cold beer, and pretty women will never go out of style” certainly knows what he is doing.

The Courtyard
It has been hot at the beach lately.

Ok, maybe hot is not the proper word. It has been hot for the beach at this time of the year. I think it was up to 83-85F / 28-29C over the weekend and in to today as well. This heat has reduced the number of smokers in the courtyard. Some of the coz class girls, since they wear all black, are probably staying inside in the air conditioned parts of the building and not going outside.

I suppose when the temperature cools off some what the smokers will be back out in the courtyard like usual.

On the plus side, I think I got more accomplished today. Perhaps, this was a direct result of not spending as much time looking out at the smokers or having them noisily converse on the bench outside of my office.

Cracked Tree in the Park
When I got home from work today, I noticed there was a city worker, perhaps, out in the park where the tree with the cracked limb was. The limb has fallen from the trunk finally or maybe someone helped it along.

The worker was walking around the tree, looking at it and scratching his head.

I can imagine what he was thinking as he was walking around. “Man, this is sure is a tree with a cracked limb; no doubt about it…Crud, it is going to be one butt ugly job of cutting this tree down because we can’t bring our trucks anywhere near the tree…I am going to have to cut it up into little pieces and then carry the little pieces out to the trucks by hand; that is going to take a long time…Man, what did I do to deserve this crummy job?...Maybe I’ll call in sick that day and let that idiot boss of mine handle this piece of crap job.”

Of course, the larger question is still unanswered and that was whether the cracked limb was just a consequence of old age and the weight of the limb being too much for the tree to support. The alternative hypothesis is the tree was infected with an insect or disease and that weakened the tree and has the spread of whatever damaged the tree been contained or not.

Personally, I am going with the infected tree hypothesis.

Hopefully, the chain saw gods will be with me and the cutting work and the attendant noise will be completed while I am away in the office at work.

Komyo Ga Tsuji Samurai Drama
I was watching the samurai drama on Saturday night instead of writing the dissertation or indulging myself in idle chit chat and banter on MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger.

The drama is historically based on Japan’s warring era. Right now, the time line is about ten or fifteen or so years before the rise of the great Tokugawa Shogunate that ruled Japan, peacefully for the most part, for almost 270 years.

Lord Nobunaga, a daimyo [major feudal lord] was assassinated by one of his senior vassals. This was more like a scene from JULIUS CAESAR where he was slain by the noble Brutus “to save Rome.”

There was a striking similarity between the two characters. Both wanted to become the absolute rulers of their country for a variety reasons. Of course, this being a samurai drama, there had to be a battle with countless bodies from both sides all over the place when the assassination took place.

Just as in JULUIS CAESAR, the remaining vassals and friends of the assassinated lord launched a war against the assassin and his army. Unfortunately, there was no nifty funeral oration by a Mark Anthony character in my samurai drama because Lord Nobunaga was not a very likable lord; he saw himself as a good and the ruthless killing of innocents and noncombatants will tend to reduce one’s good image.

Lord Oda Hideyoshi, as the leading general in the war against the assassin, is about to become the shogun or probably will in the next few episodes. I find it interesting to see that he was careful with his soldiers and tried to avoid high casualties in battle now but when he becomes Shogun he thinks nothing of sending an army of over 100,000 to invade and lay waste to Korea.

Maybe this is one reason why the Koreans do not care too much for the Japanese.

If I mixed up the plot, then maybe the cheesy translations are to blame for misleading me.

On Sunday, I fired up the DVD player and tossed in Kurosawa’s samurai classic KAGEMUSHA for another viewing because it is set in the same time. After watching the film again on Sunday, I think I have a slightly better understanding of Japan and the period.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update Part Two

Visitors
I have to add three more visitors to the totals in Part One. We had more visitors from Taiwan, United Kingdom, and Canada.

Dissertation
I wrote nine more pages this weekend and added three more pages of references. The text portion of the project is now at 83 pages. While nine pages do not seem like very much, one must remember that it takes about an hour to write a page. Nine pages were at the upper end of my weekend goal of five to ten pages so I am pleased with that.

I counted up my remaining references and I only have about 85 or so left. If I average a third to half a page from each reference, I am looking at another 30 to 40 pages of text. That would be a nice result.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

Weekend Update - Part One

Blogger.com
It seems that my ability to upload photos is dependent on the time of day. I could not upload the belly piercing photos on either Wednesday or Thursday and I tried at several time during the evening up to about 10:00 PM which is late for me.

Friday, I was able to upload three, nifty, belly piercing photos with no trouble at all. Actually, the Friday upload was more of a test than anything else. When I uploaded the Mercedes Terrell photo, I was sort of forced into adding the two Cora Linn photos and a weak commentary.

Anyway, I am pleased and that is the most important thing.

Fashion Sense
I will be the first to admit that I have a limited fashion sense. After all, I wear dark flannel grey suits with white shirts and dark red striped ties and well polished black wingtip shoes to work.

I know, you are thinking so 1960s; so conservative; so old fashioned.

This is true but people with money are usually older and like to see those that they will entrust their money to [bankers like me] are conservative and are not going to make a loan for a breast enlargement so a young lady could have a career as a stripper.

Full and fair disclosure and for the record, I did make that type of loan once in my career. The loan was paid in full on time and according to terms.

All of which leads to nowhere fast, but, I will get to the point eventually if you bear with me.

It was warmish to almost hot at the office on Friday. I think the temperature was around 80F / 27C. Of course, there was a nice breeze off of the ocean so that made things pleasant outside.

I saw one young lady who was out in the courtyard around midday on Friday. She was wearing a white, long sleeved pullover or sweatshirt, white jeans, and white lace up boots with a fake fur trim. Her jeans were stuffed inside of her boots. She must have been incredibly warm and uncomfortable in an outfit that made no sense unless she was dressed like that for a modeling photo session at one of the cosmetics companies in the building.

Why only reaction was why?

Why was she dressed in the most uncomfortable manner possible on a warm Summer day? I should also point out that it was much hotter as you moved away from the beach; up to 100F / 37C or more.

Then, I saw two more interesting young women come into the building while I was on the telephone with vendors. They were both wearing cowboy boots. One wore the boot with Capri pants and the other had on a very short skirt.

I thought cowboy boots went out with the 1980s and line dancing. It was a very incongruous site.

Oh yes, you have to look out the window when you are talking to vendors. It helps preserve your sanity. Vendors are trying to sell you something that you do not want and will never accept any answer that begins with the word, no or any other negative phrasing.

Laptop in the Office
I took my laptop into work with me on Friday because I needed to update some project Gantt charts. I have personal copy of Microsoft Project that I use to track what I am working on for the company. I decided that I would update the charts as billable time and not do them for free at home.

I was in the middle of revising one chart when a vendor called. It was a long conversation so the screen saver program kicked in and I was treated to a great photo of the Grand Canyon that Doug took earlier this year.



Then, it switched to a Cora Linn photo...



before moving on to an Aiko Tanaka photo.



That was when I decided to perhaps close the top of the laptop so no one would see a photo that might upset them.

Doug
Doug called on Friday to tell me that he had successfully registered for the Fall Semester ay school. He is taking four classes including two of the ones that his professors invited him to sign up for. He was happy with his schedule that gives him Thursdays and Fridays with no classes.

We also talked about going to a Brazilian churrascaria in August for a dinner. A churrascaria is an all you can eat Brazilian bar-be-qued beef restaurant. You get a salad bar and then the servers wheel a slab of beef up to your table and cut off a chunk of beef for your meal. They come back during the meal incase you are still hungry. This sounded like a perfect meal for us and we tentatively agreed to go visit one on August 19th.

All you can eat beef so what’s not to like about it?

The only downside is no Amy the Server or Lily the Server to make the meal complete.

Cracked Tree in the Park
I wrote about the three in the park that is next to my building that had a large limb crack off last Friday evening. I had been expecting the Parks Department would have been out there and cut the fallen limb up quickly.

The city workers must not see this fallen tree limb as a real priority. By this past Friday, they had been able to get out to the tree and put some of that yellow caution tape around it. Maybe they will get around to cutting it up by this coming Friday.

Visitors
I had to start over with the blog’s visitor traffic count. This last week was a good one for foreign visitors. We visits from The Netherlands, France [two], Germany, Canada, South Africa, Australia [two], Indonesia, and Singapore. That is an interesting mix of visitors.


I had thought about waiting until Sunday before I put the blog up but decided to post the first half of the Weekend Update today.

Great Belly Piercings

Great Belly Piercings
Here are three great belly piercings for your viewing pleasures. Two are from the Babe of The Moment Coral Linn and one is from Mercedes Terrell. I think you can figure out who is who in the photos.

Naturally, I can post the photos well after I wrote in the blog about my acceptance of belly piercings on Wednesday.

I won't complain because, after downloading a bazillion patches and fixes from Microsoft and Symanetc today, I was able to go directly from my Verzion email account to Blogger.com without have any annoying error messages about cookies and things like that. Life is good and being able to download 36MB of patches and fixes from the Evil Empire in Redmond in less than two minutes is just plain slick.

Be well and stay happy and enjoy the photos and your weekend.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
The weekend is here and not a day too soon for me. Of course, I have less than a full schedule of activities planned to occupy my time.

This is another weekend that I am devoting to dissertation writing. I want to finish the project and the only way I can finish is to write.

The weather at the beach should be perfect for cruising down along the bike path and watching the young, bikini clad, beach volleyball players in the sand. The forecasted highs for the weekend are around 80F / 27C. I only have one minor difficulty with cruising on the bike path and that is my bicycle tires are a mess and I do not have time to get it fixed before the weekend.

Lunch with Ray
I had lunch with my friend Ray. We worked together for a period at Imperial Capital Bank. His office is a few miles / kilometers from where I am working so we get together periodically.

The big topic of our lunches is who was the latest person that we knew to leave the bank. There were a couple of high level departures in June and these were surprises to me because they seemed like key players when they came on board the bank. Then, over the months their roles seemed to expand. Now, they are gone but not forgotten.

I wonder what employee morale is like now? I would hazard a guess and say that is not too high right now.

The bank has a practice of starting a new activity without fully thinking it through and when the obvious hard times come, and they always do, the bank tends to cut and run. This does not produce a consistent or coherent strategy or vision for the organization.

Ray told me that most of the people who were forced out before me seem to be doing just great. I am happy for them because they did not deserve to get pushed out except for maybe one or two.

The Princess
I spoke to the Princess this morning my time and afternoon for her. I am pleased to report that she is well and happy, especially since her weekend starts tonight. That is one of the best benefits of working a 4/40 schedule.

I wanted the Princess’ ideas and suggestions on a questionable social decision that was facing me. I had called her brother to get an independent male opinion. He was more or less supportive of my initial reaction.

The Princess, on the other hand, came right out and said no before I had laid out all of the players and explained their roles in the activity. I was inclined to say no and getting solid female affirmation was gratifying. It made my decision much easier. It is nice to have the family support also.

I have made my decision and have moved on from it.

Tattoos
I saw a young woman from one of the cosmetics companies classes today. She had an interesting tattoo on her bicep.

The young woman had a peacock on her bicep. The bird was standing on her shoulder and the bird’s tail draped down her arm. I thought that was an interesting way to cover her entire bicep. Unfortunately, having a monochromatic peacock seems to be a waste of ink and skin to me.

Why go to the trouble of having a peacock tattoo if you are only using grey ink for the tattoo?

I am certain there is a perfectly logical explanation of why she selected a monochromatic look. I did not stay around to ask those questions at the end of the day or the coz class.


I hope everyone has a good weekend and I will be back on Sunday with the usual Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy.

Validation

Validation
And, no, I do not mean a parking lot validation for free parking.

I feel my beliefs about how unattractive tattoos are on women were validated this morning as I drove into the office. I was listening to the Adam Corolla Show on the local radio. Please don’t ask me to explain why I was listening to the show because it is not all that good. I think my alternative choices were worse.

Anyway.

Corolla went off on a rant, as he is prone to do and this seems to be the mainstay of the program, about how ugly women look with tattoos and multiple piercings such as nose hoops and brow piercings. It was nice to see someone else who did not care for female body art besides me.

I am betting he will not be at the Tattoo Expo this weekend either.

I think I am more open with a piercing or may be I am just more ambivalent towards piercings. I think my more open attitude is because a piercing will close itself if left alone long enough and the metal hoop, stud, or rod is removed. I will be among the first to admit that a nose ring is unpleasant for me. I can live with a couple of piercings in an ear.

I find a belly piercing can be very attractive. I think I have a photo of the Babe of the Moment with a belly piercing and you can judge for yourself; assuming, of course, that I can post a photo tonight. [No luck on the photo uploading tonight.]

Doug mentioned to me that Blogger was going to have some maintenance work done this afternoon and he did not know how long it would be. So, if this blog is not posted until Thursday, it is not my fault.

Lunch at the Old Office Part II
Lisa gave me some miniature bundt cakes as a belated birthday present. One was a lemon one and the other was a chocolate one with chocolate icing and chocolate chips in the middle.

Surprise, surprise, I had the chocolate one last night. It was beyond yummy; it was a perfect way to end the day. I wisely took my blood sugar reading before I had the cake. If I had taken the reading after I had the cake, I think the reading would have been around 500 or some other outrageously high number.

I will have the lemon one over the weekend and have cantaloupe melon slices for the dessert after dinner for the next few days. I need to purge my system of the chocolate. But the chocolate cake was so good and delicious, I could have polished off two or three of these little chocolate calorie bombs without even blinking my eyes.

And, then, suffered the consequences of my indulgences for the next several days.

The Princess
I phoned the Princess this afternoon my time and early evening time for her because we had not spoken in a while, last week actually. I wanted to know how she was; I figured she was well since she had not called me.

She said, “Daddy, I’m on my way out.”

I suggested that I call her at lunch tomorrow and she said, “I have lunch plans for tomorrow, Daddy.”

I said that I would call at another time and the Princess said that would be good and that she could take a little break to talk to me. I think I should feel good but I am not sure.

Market
I went to the market on my way home from work tonight. I was about out of food so I decided to stock up for a while. I think I got to the market before everyone else who shopped after work because it was not too crowded for a change. Of course, not being crowded meant there were fewer interesting people to consider wandering up and down the aisles like me.


That was my day. I hope you all had wonderful days gentle readers.

Be well and stay happy.

Blog Update

Blog Update
I was able to find a work around that I think will work for me. I found that if I go to blogger.com through or after another web site like MSN.com I can connect to the service and actually upload photos. I did create a Balancing Checkbooks blog site in MSN’s MySpaces so I have an alternative location that I can go to if this work around proves to be less than effective for me.

This process worked last night but who knows if it work today. In any event, there are no new photos for today.

I was able to start up with Site Meter for the blog. I lost all of the old visitor traffic data when I was fusing and fixing and fooling around with my Verizon setups over the weekend.

Tats
When I was driving out to Morton’s on Saturday, I noticed several signs along the freeway that indicated there would be a big tattoo expo this coming weekend at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. Obviously, your humble scribe will not be one of those in attendance. Aside from the fact tats do not interest me, the drive is too far and it will be too hot so I will confine myself to the beach for the weekend.

Today was another coz class in the building and the students returned to the more normal results with some of them having tattoos. I saw one young woman with reddish orangish hair with tats than ran from her wrist up her arm and then they disappeared under her black dress. She also had stars tattooed on her legs; they were a couple of inches / few centimeters apart. They also disappeared under her dress. The arm tattoos were like the ones on the grandmother whose photo I posted yesterday.

Nasty.

I did see two tasteful tats if that is possible.

I saw one young woman with a Pegasus tat on the back of her shoulder. It looked marginally nice. I also saw a Marilyn Monroe tat on another young woman’s shoulder or bicep. It looked nice but seemed like it belonged more appropriately on a sailor.

Lunch at the Old Office
I went to the old office for lunch today with my friends Lisa and Vivian.

Having lunch with two attractive young women is always an excellent thing for a man, especially an older one like me. We had lunch in the restaurant next door to the old office. The restaurant is convenient and the food is simple and filling and those are good qualities when you are in traffic congested West Los Angeles – Century City [sections of Los Angeles].

The traffic is bad enough for Doug to avoid the area if he can. I think his first choice for transportation to an event in the Westside is someone else’s car and he as a passenger – assistant navigator who is ready at all times to phone The Navigator; that would be me.

We talked about the office at lunch. One of the vice presidents is leaving before the end of the month. I wished him well on his relocation to San Francisco. Vivian is getting a long overdue promotion and is now on her way to becoming a movie financier. I can see Vivian going to the Cannes Film Festival now, she would be stunning there. Vivian has a way with words so that you can still like her even if she said your idea was terrible.

Lisa said she was looking forward to the August management retreat at the bank. It is being held later than usual. It will be in Napa, California for the first time. Napa is not near any airport so the logistics of getting close to 100 people from all over the country to the meeting venue ought to be a challenge.

In a way, I wish I could go to the management meeting and at the same time I am glad that I am no longer with the bank. The bank and I have a different set of values and beliefs. It is difficult to spend any time in the service as an officer without adopting some strong set of values. Having Marines around you when you are young and impressionable only enforces that sense of honor and duty and country.


Be well and stay happy.

Do I Give Up The Blog?

Do I Give Up The Blog?
To paraphrase the immortal Bard, “Do I blog or do I not blog? That is the question and whether I should suffer the outrageous fortune of erratic service and countless frustrations over whether my cookie setting is correct.”

Anyway, I needed some help from the Doug today to get my Anime Expo posting out. I had been trying all weekend long to post the comments. I had been unable to post the photos and they made the whole posting worth while. Well, they did in my mind.

I have been experiencing real frustration with Blogger.com over the last few days. Mostly it has been whether my cookie setting was correct or not. Today, for example, I tried to post the Anime Expo blog and upload photos from my computer. I had no success. I then hopped over to Doug’s Skeet on Mischa [ http://skeetonmischa.blogspot.com ] to catch a great review of the Russ Meyers’ classic cult film, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

Then, I came back to log into Blogger and work on today’s posting. I was rejected because my cookie setting was not compatible with what Blogger requires.

Hello Blogger, I didn’t make any changes.

My setup worked a few minutes earlier and now you tell me it won’t work. I have to ask myself why put up with that frustration and pain and suffering. If I crave that level of abuse, I can go back to working long distances from the beach and spend hours stuck in traffic.

I will let you all know what I decide to do with the blog over the next few days.

Babe of the Moment
What do you do on a slow blog day? Toss in photos of the Babe of the Moment, Cora Linn. I think this is an excellent solution.





Coz Class
There was another cosmetics class today. Nothing new there. I didn’t notice any tattoos on the young women for a change. That was excellent for me.



I know some of you thing I am a bit of a nut on this subject. But, I believe that once you start down the slippery slope of having tats you may not know when to stop as this grandmother can illustrate my point of view so well. She is also my best argument for singlehoodedness too.

Job Searching and Interviewing
I got a phone call from an organizer of a new bank in Orange County this afternoon. He wanted to talk to me about a Chief Credit Officer position. I told that I could bring too much to the table beyond some solid lending skills and a lot of hard work. We talked some and I must have said something that clicked with him because he asked me to send him some more information. It will be interesting to see how things shape up with this job.


Be well and stay happy.

Anime Expo 2006

I went to the Anime Expo 2006 on July 2nd. This was the fifteenth anniversary of the event but my first visit. The only comparisons for this event that I had were the great San Diego Comic-Con and one Star Trek convention, not a full range of comparisons.

One of my first reactions was that parking was a mess. You couldn’t enter the main parking area entrance for some reason. I had to drive around the Anaheim Convention Center until I finally came to the parking structure entrance, I arrived around 11:00 AM and the structure was crowded. I ended up on the fourth floor of a five story structure. I later learned that it opened at 8:00 AM which explained why it was crowded.

I was walking in from the parking structure behind a mother and three young women [early teenagers]. One of them turned around and asked me what floor of the structure we were on. She recognized me from the structure elevator. Of course she would, she pushed me aside, even though I had been waiting longer and I was clearly older, to get in the elevator. She was wearing some small horns on her head and had a fox tail coming out of the top of her jeans. She had blond hair.

I told her third floor.

Our cars were on the fourth floor; learn to respect your elders for we may be useful to you some day grasshopper.

As Bluto from ANIMAL HOUSE once said, “Don’t get mad; get even.” I think that was from his famous “When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” soliloquy.

Another one of my impressions was that this seemed to be equally gender balanced in terms of attendance. Comic-Con is a predominately male attendee. I don’t remember that much about the Star Trek convention.

This was an Asian American crowd overall. I guess this is a reflection of the tastes for anime and manga that are not as great with the rest of us in Southern California. That, plus it was the 4th of July long weekend and the surf was great and the sand was hot. If I were really young, I would have probably gone to Huntington Beach for the surf, sand, and bikinis

Anime Expo 2006 is not as large as Comic-Con although it may become as significant but it will take some time to reach that level. The aisles were wider at Anime Expo so that made wandering around better.




The French maid is on the left side of the photo.



I did not seem too many booth bimbos and those that I did see were not on a par with Comic-Con.



Of course, it was possible that I wandered through the game and manga section during their breaks and missed the interesting ones.

People dressed as characters at the Star Trek convention and Comic-Con. The character dressing was more pronounced here. I have watched a lot of Star Trek so I could recognize who the people were trying to be when I was at the Star Trek event and I have read my fair share of comic books. That was easy.



At Anime 2006, I could only guess at what some of the people were since I am not much of a graphic novel fan or up on most of the anime cartoons. I did see one man dressed up as a Transformer, Optimus Prime. I could recognize him because Doug had Transformers when he was young but then every boy did.

I could also recognize the Asian American girls who were dressed up as Japanese high school students with their short plaid skirts, white shirts with ties, and knee socks. This was easy. For a while, it looked like class photo day at school.



Then, I came to the characters from either the manga or from cartoons or possibly both. I had no clue. I saw one young woman, well I think she was a young woman, who was wearing a kimono, had a long greenish hair wig with little horns, and her skin was blue. She was very pleased when I asked if I could take her photo. I guess being asked for your photo while you are in costume is a sign that your costume is good.



Of course, for every attractive costume, there is the reason why I sometimes have nightmares. I would not want to meet her in broad daylight unless I was being backed up by the 1st Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment.


Be well and stay happy and a big shout out to Team Member Douglas for helping his Dad with the posting.

Weekend Update

Fussin’ and a Fixin’
I spent a good part of the weekend fussing and fixing my Verizon setup and how things work together. Normally, this part is just so incredibly terrible that you want to toss the whole personal computer out of the window, checking carefully first, of course, so that you won’t hit anyone.

This experience was better for me since the tech support people were all located in the good ol’ U S of A and spoken fluent American English which is not the same as what is spoken in the rest of the English speaking world.

Granted, I did have to listen to the annoying messages while I was on hold. I can put up with that if I can talk to someone who understands what I am saying and I can understand what he or she is saying. I will say this; the knowledge of the Indian tech support people seems to be higher than those that I encountered at Verizon. This could just have been the luck of the “next available tech support person” roulette wheel.

I was going to use Netscape Navigator for my browser and email programs because Doug said that my trouble with viewing my blog page could be the Internet Explorer browser. The change did work and I was able to see the blog the way it is supposed to be. I also checked how Internet Explorer looked and it looked just fine also.

I decided to stay with Netscape because it seemed to have fewer security failures. Choosing the lesser of two evils did not seem like a brilliant decision making process to me after I reflected on it.

Then, I decided to check for updates for my Microsoft programs on Friday night. Microsoft requires anyone to use IE 5.0 or higher to be able to download optional programs like new drivers and such. I can still get the security updates with Netscape but that seemed like a burden to me, having to switch between browsers to get useful updates.

Netscape, of course, will not work with Outlook Express. Why does that not surprise me?

Finally, I discovered that with Netscape that I could not create a blog posting in Microsoft Word and then do a cut and paste to put in the blog. That convinced me to go back to IE and Outlook Express for browsing and emailing.

Dinner at Morton’s
Doug and his friend and I went to dinner at Morton’s Saturday night. It was an absolutely wonderful meal; Morton’s always is that way. The thing that was so good was Amy, our favorite server, was working and she was our server last night. I should have asked her if I could post a photo of her in the blog but I managed to forget to do that.

Doug and I talked about my blog photo posting troubles at dinner. He said that maybe now was the time to go to Apple for the next computer and avoid all of the troubles that I have been having. While it is possible that I could avoid a great many of my troubles that I have been having with the computer and the Internet, I am just uncertain if I want to learn whole new programs just to avoid some computer problems.

I felt that solution was just too far to go for me at the present time. Doug’s friend agreed with me that changing to an Apple machine was an extreme solution and that my troubles did not seem to warrant any extreme measures yet.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when the President of the United States of America was older than me. That is not the case any more.

Visitors
This was a big week for international visitors. Following the practice of listing the countries in order of visit, the non-domestic visitors came from the United Kingdom [twice], Canada [twice], Belgium, Hong Kong, and Japan.

Trees in the Park
As many of you know, I live next to a park. For those of you that did not know, now you do.

Friday night I was having my dinner and watching the local television news when I heard a loud cracking sound. I went out on the balcony and saw tree’s limb had shattered for no apparent reason. The tree looked perfectly healthy and there was no significant wind that could cause a tree limb to crack. It was getting dark so I really could not see the tree all that well.

I was on the balcony this afternoon, talking to Doug, about posting photos to the blog. He gave me some suggestions that may end up working for me. I took another look at the shattered tree limb. This was a large limb that was maybe eight or nine inches / twenty two centimeters in diameter where it cracked. The tree looked very healthy in the light of day, except for the now dying leaves on the branch.

Of course, it could have been diseased from insects and such. I noticed the two trees closest to my balcony had chewed up leaves all over. If the trees are infected, I certainly hope the Parks Department does something permanently and does it quickly. I would not want to have a weakened tree limb to come crashing into my bedroom some windy Winter evening.

Blog Photo Posting
I tried to post some photos today using the upload function. That didn’t work except for one attempt when I was able to upload a smaller Babe of the Moment photo for the sidebar. Doug offered to post the photos to his online photo server service and then send me the URLs so I could get the photos up that way.

I tried that approach and had no luck. I am thinking that Blogger is having some technical troubles or is overloaded. I will try again later tonight.


Be well and stay happy.

DSL is Back

Babe of the Moment
We have a new Babe of the Moment this week. Finally.

The new Babe of the Moment is Cora Linn. I found her photos on a web site [http://www.speedoptions.com] that Doug pointed out in his Skeet on Mischa blog last year when he was talking about having Mercedes Terrell drive him to Lee’s for a couple of Number 4s for a lunch. You have to be a semi-regular Skeet Shooter to understand the whole story.

This is Mercedes Terrell. She can drive my car anytime also. We don't have to go to Lee's for a couple of No. 4s.



And a close up shot as well.



Back to the Babe of the Moment.

Based on some reasonable but refutable logic, I am guessing Cora Linn is in her middle to late twenties which is sort of old and close to the expiration date if you are a spokes model. According to her web site [http://www.coralinn.com] and the Speed Options site, Cora is 5 feet tall and measures 32 – 23 – 32 or, for those of you who use the metric system, 152 cm tall and 81 – 58 – 81.

Nice shape.

DSL is Back
I have DSL service from Verizon now. It only took me about three hours to get setup so I could surf the net and send and receive email; so much for the one hour the user manual said I should a lot for the installation and set up. I will have more about this on the Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy

Happy Independence Day and Weekend Update

Happy Independence Day
Yes, gentle readers; it is our 230th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. I hope you enjoy the holiday and are able to reflect on the true meaning of the day.

Remember, freedom is never free. It has a cost and always will. Be sure to thank a veteran for the freedom you enjoy today. Veterans always pay the biggest costs.

Programming Notes and Reality Check Part 2
I had planned to offer you a gianormous blog posting today with multiple photos including a new Babe of the Moment.

Unfortunately, that will not happen. The new Verizon modem that was supposed to be delivered yesterday did not arrive. It will not arrive until tomorrow, maybe. It seems the package was missent or left in a shipping facility, Verizon’s or UPS’s, for a day and it was delayed. All of which leads to me filing an extra blog posting this coming weekend, probably Saturday with the photos and minimal editorial writing.

I checked the status of my Verizon order on Saturday morning. You have no idea how surprised I was to learn that Verizon had activated my DSL phone circuit on June 29th. I was so less pleased to see that the delivery date for the software had changed to July 5th.

I checked again this morning. My software and modem are now at a local UPS facility and I can expect that they will be delivered sometime tomorrow while I am work.

You must admit gentle readers that your humble scribe has experienced more than his fair share of bad karma with the changing of DSL service vendors.

I will be busy tomorrow installing the new Verizon software and spending way too much time on the line with tech support dealing with the setup. Then I have a bunch of large newsletter files to download that I have been saving for three weeks now. I will also be sending out a monster email to let everyone know what the new email address is and to make the changes now. This all means that I won’t be tossing out a posting tomorrow night.

Sorry, but we all have to make some sacrifices in the name of progress. Think of no blog tomorrow as being one of the very small sacrifices.

Visitors
We had a bunch of foreign visitors this past week. I decided to list them in the order of their appearance. This seems as logical as any other method so here they are: Australia, Canada [2], United Kingdom, New Zealand [2], Ireland, Israel, Japan, Indonesia, and Norway.

The total visitor count for the month was 247; not as good as May but still a creditable month for 2006.

Anime Expo 2006
I went to the Anime Expo 2006 on Sunday. Doug thought that would be a good day to catch the show.

Catch the show was the operative phrase on Sunday morning and afternoon. If you have ever seem photos of people who dress up as characters when they go to a Star Trek Convention then you have a general idea of how many adults were dressed.

The Expo was held in the Anaheim Convention Center. It reminded me a great deal of the mammoth Comic-Con in San Diego every Summer. There were a handful of game and manga publishers there and a bunch of vendors who were selling everything from DVDs to costumes and makeup.

The Expo’s hours of 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM seemed odd compared to Comic-Con’s hours of 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM. But, I suppose when you are across the street from Disneyland that you need to accommodate those who want to visit the theme park as well.

This was the fifteenth anniversary of the Expo. I think it is smaller than Comic-Con, maybe because of the more limited fan base, most of whom seem to be Asian Americans and females.

I was walking in from the parking structure behind a mother and three young women [early teenagers]. One of them turned around and asked me what floor in the structure we were on. She recognized me from the structure elevator. Of course she would, she pushed me aside, even though I had been waiting longer, to get in the elevator. She was wearing some small horns on her head and had a fox tail coming out of the top of her jeans. She had blond hair.

I told her third floor.

Our cars were on the fourth floor; learn to respect your elders for we may be useful to you some day grasshopper.

As Bluto from ANIMAL HOUSE once said, “Don’t get mad; get even.” I think that was from his famous “When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” soliloquy.

Naturally, I have some interesting photos but I have been unable to upload them yet so this is another backlog for the blog once I get DSL service in action.

I have watched a lot of Star Trek so I could recognize who the people were trying to be at a STar Trek event. That was easy. At Anime 2006, I could only guess at what some of the people were since I am not much of a graphic novel fan or much for the anime cartoons. I did see one man dressed up as a Transformer, Optimus Prime. I could recognize him because Doug had Transformers when he was young but then every boy did.

I could recognize the girls who were dressed up as Japanese high school students with their short plaid skirts, white shirts with ties, and knee socks. This was easy. For a while, it looked like class photo day at school.

There was one young woman who dressed up as a French maid with fish net stockings.

Then, I came to the characters from either the manga or from cartoons or possibly both. I had no clue. I saw one young woman, well I think she was a young woman, who was wearing a kimono, had a long white hair wig with little horns, and her skin was blue. She was very pleased when I asked if I could take her photo. I guess being asked for your photo while you are in costume is a sign that your costume is good.

The Anime Expo did have some booth bimbos but they were not on the same level as Comic-Con. Yes, I do have photos of them as well but they will have to wait until DSL is restored.

Friday at the Office
Actually, my Friday started off very well when the traffic news reader [Vera Jimenez on KCBS 2, www.kcbs2.com] on the local early morning television news show had a bit of skin peer out from under the bottom of her sweater that rose up while she was telling everyone that traffic this morning would be light and the drive to work would be good.

Of course the drive would be good Vera; a firm belly is a perfect way to start the day.

Friday at the office was an interesting day.

Not many of the staff were focused on their work at hand. Most, including me, were thinking about the weekend and what they would be doing. Perfectly logical reaction.

It is now Summer at the beach so the dress in the courtyard for the smokers has improved from my point of view. There were three or four who were sporting belly shirts and they were worth more than a second glance since they did not have any fat to spoil the views. That was sweet.

The Los Angeles Times [our local major newspaper] ran a feature today on what it called “Sausage Casing Girls.” The article tended to decry how young women were wearing may too tight clothes that made them look like sausage casings. It said that this style was not flattering and the extra weight was neither attractive nor healthy for them.

There was one young woman [27] who said that she was “fat, cute chick.” At 230 pounds / 104 kilos and 68 inches / 178 centimeters tall, she certainly was fat but she could never be cute in my mind. I guess she has no self esteem troubles.

After seeing a photo of her, I gathered a new sense of calm about not dating while I am writing the dissertation.

Back to Friday.

Since it was sunny and Summer, there was more flesh visible than in the Winter and Fall. No surprises here. That meant that there were more opportunities to see bad tattoos.

I did see one cosmetics class student with a clipper ship tattooed to her bicep. It immediately reminded me of one of my gunner’s mates on the good ship USS Leonard F. Mason. He had clipper ships on both biceps. He also had a lot of other tats over most of his upper body. The tats continued on up her arm and spilled out over her shoulder and then ran down the back and front of her body until they disappeared under her black dress. That was enough for me.

Dissertation
I worked on the dissertation this weekend. I did get some writing in but I did not write as much as I had hoped I would be able to write. Between the Summer and other things, I got distracted.

This blog took over two hours to write. I know it may not seem like it took two hours to write but it did. You should try writing your own blog sometime. It is often difficult to make a dull day or experience sound interesting.

Komyo Ga Tsuji
That’s the name of the historical samurai drama I have been watching lately on television. I have no idea what it means. The show translates most of everything else except the title and the commercials. The subtitles are fairly good translations but every once in a while you notice a translation that was done literally and not idiomatically.

The drama is based on the rise of a samurai during the warring era of Japan in the late sixteenth century. When I started watching, the samurai had only a handful of vassals and a 400 koku stipend and now he has a large retinue of followers and a 1,300 koku stipend. I believe that koku is a measure of rice since metallic money was only coming into circulation widely in Japan. He has an independent wife who seems to be the smarter one of the couple sometimes.

I find the series interesting for several reasons. I now have a better understanding of some of Kurosawa’s samurai epics since they were set in the same period. Some of the characters in this drama later, chronologically speaking, showed up in the Immortal Yi Soon-Shin series that I watched last year. For example, the founder of the great Tokugawa Shogunate was only a minor or middle level lord in this series. The principle character’s immediate and middle level lord appears to be Lord Hideyoshi who later launched the Japanese invasion of Korea.

Their clan lord, Nobunaga, is certifiably crazy; he thinks he is a god. From history, I know that Nobunaga leads his army against several other clans and dies rather badly.

This has me wondering how Hideyoshi and the rest survive. I am thinking that some where along the way in the series they will have an epiphany and change sides. Changing sides does not seem to be so bad of a solution to a difficult moral problem. Surprisingly, leaving a bad lord to join a good lord who may be on the winning side does not result in a loss of honor.

Anyway that was my weekend. I hope you all had a good weekend.


Be well and stay happy.