Isn't It Friday?

Isn’t It Friday – Weekend Update?
It sure seemed like it was Friday this morning when I drove to make a deposit. I felt like I should have still been home in bed. Oh well, it wasn’t Friday and so I have another chance to enjoy Friday tomorrow.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me this morning. Actually, she made two phone calls and sent me an email as well.

Sharon wanted me to take a look at what she thought was the final version of her PowerPoint presentation. We spent an hour and a half going over the presentation, slide by slide. I did not suggest any substantive changes. I suggested some heading changes and spreading the information out so the fonts could remain constant and consistent throughout the presentation. I also suggested that she add one slide.

All in all, I think it is a very fine presentation. It presents her ability well and should help her win the contract.

I was also very glad that I had charged my cell phone battery last night. We talk by cell phone almost exclusively because we both have the same carrier. We signed up for unlimited in-network calling. Sharon uses the same carrier as the Princess so that helps when I talk with the Princess.

Dissertation
I had allocated this morning to the dissertation writing on the new section for Chapter 2. Obviously, with a 90 minute phone call to Sharon, my morning writing session faded very quickly.

I will try to slip the writing session into my weekend schedule starting tomorrow. I would like to finish off the addition and the verb tense revision so I can forward a portion of the Chapter to my Committee Chair for his review and comments.

I may also do some archival data research this weekend also. Archival data research is a fancy term for looking up information from a period and comparing it with current information. Then, one can make some observations and draw some conclusions. It is dull and boring work but it has to be done.

Time Warner Cable
I am a reluctant victim of Time Warner Cable. Time Warner became my provider when they took over Adelphia.

During the last four years of Adelphia, the cable service worked just like it is supposed to; you turn your television on and there is a picture. The only service call was to upgrade my cable box from an analogue signal to a digital signal. That was a simple box switching event.

At Noon today, the cable service crapped out again. “Crapped out” is a technical term, much like “It don’t work.” I had a fine signal this morning and everything was fine. I tried power cycling the cable box and that did not work.

Sidebar: Have you ever noticed how many things can get fixed with a power cycling?

Anyway, I phoned the Time Warner Non Customer Service Center. I was connected to Bambi or maybe it was Tiphanie or Amber who tried to help me. She could see from looking at my account that I had called on Sunday about the same problem.

I am willing to credit her with some minimal brain functions and the ability to read at the eighth grade level. I don’t think she has any ability to function at a higher level and draw conclusions from observations.

Now you are probably wondering how I came to the conclusion that Bambi was not capable of higher order thinking. Here is my proof.

Right after she told me that she could schedule a service call for tomorrow afternoon, she said, “Have a nice day.”

I asked, “And how would I do that without any television service?” There was a pause.

Bambi said, “Well, try to have a nice day.”

I am very proud of myself that I was able to exercise restraint and not blurt out something I would later regret or something I might not later regret.

Woman of the Moment
The new Woman of the Moment is K T So. I first noticed her in a Speed Options feature; I should also point out that I noticed Mercedes Terrell, Cora Linn, Miki Black, and Aiko Tanaka there as well. But, you would expect that sort of image consistency.

K T So is 66 inches / 168 centimeters tall and measures 34 – 24 – 34 inches or 86 – 61 – 86 centimeters. She has a website at http://www.kt-so.com in case you want to learn more about her.

In learning more about Ms So, I discovered that she is a growing young woman. The Speed Options feature listed her height at 66 inches. Her web site lists her height at 67 inches / 170 centimeters. I suppose that one of those numbers is correct.


This photo is from the Speed Options feature from 2004.


This photo is from the web site and is from 2004 also.

Some of the photos are from the September 2004 Speed Options and some are from her web site. For the most part, the photos are from 2004 and 2005.

The Princess
I got an email from the Princess this morning. She said that she and her roommate and their best friend along with six other women are going to a Labor Day Weekend wedding in Jamaica starting tomorrow morning. She said that she didn’t think her cell phone would work in Jamaica.

I guess I won’t call her and wish her a happy weekend now.

Weekend Preview
Beyond the dissertation, I have no set plans for the weekend.

I will be talking to Doug for his recommendations on what to catch at the local multiplex. I will have some time to catch a film or two. I don’t think there is all that much that I want to see. I am leaning towards a Chinese film by Zhang Zimou, RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES. I will have to drive to see it but I think it will be worth the drive.

I may cook out on the bar-be-que on the balcony. I will make my mind up when I go to the market on Saturday morning.


Have a wonderful weekend and I will be back on Monday with the Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy.

More Monday Follow Up

More Monday Follow Up
I checked my mail to see if the check from the old bank arrived in the mail box today. It didn’t.

Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it to arrive. I don’t think they have been able to properly close out my account yet. The bank only cares about customers who are putting money in and not those that want to leave. I’ll give them until tomorrow’s mail. Then, I will call the branch manager’s boss. One of the nice things about working there is I know who to call with a complaint.

I don’t feel I am being unreasonable. I think a month and a half is more than sufficient time to close out a simple checking account and payoff and close a line of credit that was associated with the checking account.

This is not rocket surgery here people.

Programming Note
Since this is the Labor Day Weekend and Monday is a holiday, the usual Weekend Update will not be out until Monday. I want to enjoy the long weekend as much as the next person.

Woman of the Moment
These are the final photos of the current Woman of the Moment. I don’t know the dates of these photos but I believe that were taken after the Speed Options feature. The photos came from Aiko Tanaka’s web site.


Have you ever noticed that most women always look great in red?

Dissertation
I did some work on my dissertation today. I am adding a new section to my Chapter 2. I think this new section will be three or four pages long. This is not going to be a difficult section to write.

My real challenge will be this weekend when I start to revise the entire chapter. I made the mistake of writing some of the chapter in the present tense. I have to go back and put everything in the past tense. That means I will be rewriting whole sentences. I am not looking forward to the job but it must be done.

When I finish the revision, I am going to send part of the chapter into my Chair and see if I am on the right track or not. The preview comments will save me a lot of work later on.

My Friend Sharon
I think I finished a PowerPoint revision project for my friend Sharon today.

She is making a new business proposal and wanted help with her PowerPoint. The original presentation was only six slides long. The current version is now 24 slides long. I took what she had put together and organized it better.

The presentation slides now all have the same fonts when before there was no font consistency. The slides are not crowded and jumbled together. There were some points with asterisks beside the text but there was no connection anywhere else in the presentation with the asterisks. She will say that she would have done that when she made the final proof reading.

Oh well, life goes on and it is what it is.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

This and That

This and That
Today’s blog posting is one of those where I do brain dump and spill out of my mind all of those minor thoughts that have been cluttering things up lately. Normally, I prefer not to do this but some days it is necessary to do it.

Woman of the Moment
I only have two photos of Aiko Tanaka for today. I want to spread the last four out so I can start the Weekend Proview with the new Woman of the Moment.


Bad Tattoos
Most of you know that I do not have a high regard for young women or women in general, since tats are on the permanent side, that have tats or as some like to call it, body art. I have agreed that a small butterfly or small heart is not going to upset me in the grand scheme of things.

All of this brings me to last night’s local television news cast. This particular station broadcasts Oakland Raider foot ball games in Los Angeles. I guess they do this on the assumption that there are some people who are Raider fans. The station ran a Raider broadcast commercial in the sports segment of the news broadcast. I thought the placement was rather logical.

I, for one, do not care all that much for the Raiders. I also absolutely and positively do not want a professional football team back in Los Angeles ever in my lifetime. I enjoy being to choose from four good to great games every Sunday.

Back to the issue of bad tattoos, the commercial for this Thursday’s Raider football broadcast featured two Hollywood type models / actresses playing on the beach with a football, clever tie-in. They were wearing black bikinis, Raider colors, and they had, what I believe were, fake Raider logo tattoos in the small of their backs.

For a moment, I was on the verge of accepting the tattoos. Then, I came to my senses and realized what a bad idea this was. I was not motivated to consider watching the football game on Thursday and it was likely to encourage impressionable young women to go have the same tattoo inked on their backs.

Monday Follow Up
I got the brokerage check on Monday; about when I thought I would receive it. I took it to the drive up ATM and deposited it today.

On the way home, I heard on my car radio that Johnny Depp was shooting pick up scenes for the third PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN film on a pirate ship that was sailing off of Redondo Beach. I decided to see if I could see the filming.

No luck; it was foggy and overcast. I could not see out in the water beyond 100 yards / 100 meters. I thought about this later and concluded that it was a hoax.

My Friend Xue
My friend Xue is in America now.

Xue is a Chinese student in graduate school, studying sociology. Xue says that I should call her Snow since that is easier to pronounce than her name. I did try to pronounce her name but gave up when she kept laughing at my attempts. Xue can pronounce my name very well but then she has taken English classes for years.

I have never taken any Chinese classes.

I like to think I helped Xue get her two year student Visa. I helped her with an essay that she had to submit as part of her Visa application. Xue had translated a paper that she had written in Chinese and then asked me to read it and make any corrections for things like American grammar and idiom. I spent about four days working on her paper to make it flow better and to clear up vague points. She got her Visa without too much trouble so all was well.

On Monday evening, we talked over the telephone for the first time.

It was like one of those hideous first serious conversations that you had with a female or male when you were young. It was painfully awkward and difficult for me; I hope I was not that dull and boring for Xue. We talked for about twenty minutes and that seemed like an eternity for me.

I don’t remember all that much of what we said last night. I hope to do better on this weekend when we talk again. I do remember that Xue told me she and the rest of the new students were having a party on Friday at a beach at Lake Michigan just before school starts next week. That should be fun for her.

I think Xue will do well in her studies. She is the first student from her university in China to receive a full scholarship to study in America. That is impressive to me.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when gasoline was USD$0.37 a gallon and you had someone else check the car’s oil level, tire pressure, and wash the windows while you sat and watched.


Be well and stay happy.

Customer Non-Service

Woman of the Moment
I think I will start off with something good for the week. These photos are all undated. I am guessing here, but I believe they were taken before the Speed Option’s feature in 2001.



Did you know how much you can learn from the Internet? I learned that Aiko means love child in Japanese; picked that up from Aiko Tanaka's website, aikotanaka.com.

It looks like we will be having a new Woman of the Moment soon, probably towards the end of the week. Fortunately, I have the next Woman selected and her photos downloaded and ready for the blog.

Customer Service
I am willing to put with some minimal forms of what some companies pass off as customer service. I know the customer service workers are not paid very much and are poorly trained and they, by definition, have to deal with unhappy people.

Lately, I have had to deal with or accept incredibly poor customer service.

At the place where I used to work, I had a checking account and a line of credit. Since I am no longer working there, I decided to close both. I wrote a nice letter to the branch manager explaining what I wanted to do and how to process the transaction. I also included more than enough to pay off the line of credit.

I sent the letter in the middle of July. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to process a simple transaction. You can imagine my dismay and disappointment when I got my July statement and found that both accounts were still open.

I waited until the branch manager was in the office and I called him.

His explanation was really sad. My letter was received in a reasonable time to process but it was put aside and not processed on time. The manager assured me that he would see to the processing personally.

Almost two weeks later with no results, I had been expecting a check in my mailbox, I called the manager again. He said that one of his staffers did not do the job correctly and that the check would go out on Friday to me.

Assuming the usual mail delivery, I ought to have the check today.

I’ll let you know what happens tomorrow. If worse comes to worse, I could drive to the branch office and sit there until the manager can create the check and then I will take it home.

I had a similar experience with my NYSE brokerage company. It is one of those big name, old line, full service firms that has or had a reputation for excellent customer service.

I had a small rollover retirement account with them. I decided to close it down this month instead of paying their annual fees. I called my broker and spoke with his assistant. She was very helpful; she sent me the paperwork promptly and explained how the process would work.

I sent the paperwork in and waited.

I received a trade confirmation a week ago Friday. The trade, selling the mutual funds shares, was settled on August 16th. Nice I thought .

Last Thursday, I phoned the broker to ask where the check was. It had been a week since settlement and I had no check. Brokerage companies get very upset when you are late in paying them. Of course, the reverse does not seem to be applicable here. I was told that a check was mailed on the day before, Wednesday, from Santa Ana.

Santa Ana is about forty miles / sixty five kilometers from where I live. Normally, I would have expected the check to be delivered on Friday. But since it was my brokerage firm, I knew that it would never get here by Friday; Saturday was a much more realistic delivery time. This assumes, naturally, that the envelope was processed and mailed on time and picked up a reasonable manner.

Saturday’s mail came and there was no check. I won’t hold my breath for a Monday delivery.

Lastly, I now have Time Warner for a cable company. They took over from Adelphia this month. While I was never a fan of Adelphia, they did manage to keep things running smoothly for a long time for me. I can only recall one service visit by Adelphia and that was to upgrade my box to digital cable.

So far, I have had two cable service failures and an aborted new cable installation. That is not a great service record for the first month alone. Last night, as I was coming back from a take out food run for dinner, I saw one the cable company workers tinkering with the cable junction box that affects my side of the building.

Ten minutes later my cable service went out.

Coincidence? I think not.

I called the cable company and got a useless customer non-care center worker who couldn’t solve my problem. She could set me up for a service call for Tuesday morning. She couldn’t do anything about contacting the dispatcher to see if the worker did something to affect my service.

Luckily for me, the service came back; probably because the idiot who messed it up when he was tinkering fixed the mistake. Maybe half of the building called in to complain and then a dispatcher connected the dots and had a brain fart discovery.

So, what does this all mean in the grand scheme of things?

I think it reflects the decline of American technology and ability. It shows that America is declining from a world economic power to a second rate country. We can’t even do simple things correct anymore like close an account or see that a payment is delivered in a reasonable time.

If we can’t close an account in over a month, how can this nation achieve greatness?

I don’t think that it can. Frankly, that saddens me.

I suppose I should feel sorry for the American workers that may be displaced when their job gets outsourced to someone who will harder and more efficiently in some place like India or the Philippines or Vietnam.

I won’t; it’s their own fault they did not care enough to do a good job. If you take care of the customer, businesses grow. If you think that idea is silly or old fashioned, just look at how companies like Honda or Toyota or Wal-Mart or Dell have grown by focusing on their customers. I have been so happy with my Japanese cars and trucks that I will never buy another car made by General Motors or Ford or Chrysler. I might drive an American car if someone gave it to me but only long enough to sell it and buy something better.

The Princess
I finally caught up with the Princess on Sunday evening.

Las Vegas was Las Vegas and she and her friends had a very good time there. This was expected. It sounded a bit on the subdued side for a Las Vegas bachelorette party. She said the wedding will be in San Francisco in November. Obviously, it won’t be an out door wedding, not at that time of the year.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Weekend Update
This is going to be a short blog posting because I did not do very much this weekend.

I did try to call the Princess to see how the Las Vegas bachelorette party was; part of me wants to know and part of me says I shouldn’t go there and to not ask. She was out having fun I suppose when I phoned her.

Woman of the Moment
These photos are undated so your guess as to when taken in as good as mine. I trust that you are enjoying the photos. No one has complained about the current selection.


I think this is a more recent photo but I could be wrong.

The Old Job
The staff at the company where I have been working gave me a going away party on Friday. That was very nice of them and something that they did not have to do for me. We had donuts since I have been bringing in donuts on the first Friday of every month.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me on Friday. She wanted to talk to me about revising her resume and a cover letter. We also talked about a job she was well qualified for but the pay was lower than what she wants or needs.

I told her that sometimes you to have to make compromises in life.

Sharon encouraged me to sign up for a class on Microsoft Access. I suppose that I should but Access is a database program and computing is not one of my best areas. I will check out what is available locally. Maybe I can find an inexpensive class.

Doug
Doug and I went to the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers for lunch on Saturday after I dropped off the six DVDs he wanted to borrow. Tommy’s serves the best chili cheeseburgers that we have ever tasted. That’s why we go there.

We would have gone to the main location in downtown Los Angeles if the weather had been cooler. It’s no fun to stand next to a hot car in a hot parking lot while you are eating and the temperature is around 95F / 34C and you are breathing auto exhaust on top of everything else.

Doug was telling me about his classes for the semester. They all seem pretty good and he is interested in them. This will be good for him. He did say that he has several former classmates in each of his classes so he has a known group of potential project partners and he can avoid any deadheads.

I was telling him that I had hit a streak of Chinese and South American women wanting to chat with me. He wondered why. I said there are two common reasons.

First, they want to practice English with a native speaker. Second, they want to meet a rich [by their standards], single, American that they can marry and then live in America and enjoy the benefits of United States citizenship. I discounted the idea that any of them think I am incredibly handsome and that they thought I was a movie star.

I told Doug that if I married a Chinese woman for example and she lived with me here for ten years, she could expect to receive around USD$1,000 a month for the rest of her life after I pass on to my final reward, whatever that is. USD$12,000 does not seem like much until you consider the Chinese per capita income is around USD$4,000 or less. She could return to China and live very nicely after I am gone.

Doug thought that was a slick deal. I said it is what it is.

Visitors
We had visitors from China [maybe a nice lady looking for a rich, single American], Australia, Canada [4], United Kingdom [4], Texas [4], Germany, and Sweden. Our visitor level passed last month’s total over the weekend. That was nice.

We also had some long time visitors. One visitor spent 19 minutes reading the blog. Another spent 23 minutes reading the blog.


Kind of a dull weekend wasn’t it? Maybe this week will be more interesting for me.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Adam Corolla was wrong about nurses
This morning on the Adam Corolla Show, here in Los Angeles, Corolla was talking about how fat nurses are and then offered canned and really cheesy explanations for their weight conditions.

I think Corolla owes the nursing profession an apology. As usual, with his limited exposure to life and a general inability to face life [couldn’t cut his children’s umbilical cords], he was off base. Nurses, or at least the ones I have know and I do not claim to know all of the nurses, have a really crummy job.

It is not easy to be with a nurse who has spent all day working with the sick and the dying. I can remember one night that Nurse Joyce and I were supposed to go to a fraternity party. Joyce had spent her day shift with a dying child who ended up passing on when she was with the child. That was not the time for fun and games; I ended up spending the night holding on to Joyce. It seemed like the right thing to do.

But back to Joyce and overweight nurses.

Joyce was what we would call really thin or even borderline anorexic today. Even if she was on the thin side, she could fill every corner of her ski pants so well that I could tell if she was carrying nickels, quarters, or dimes in her hip pocket.

Nurse Becky, being a Latina, was more like a Salma Hayek figure type of nurse. I don’t think there are many men that I know who would consider Salma Hayek as being fat. She could certainly park herself next to me on any day and I would be more than grateful.

So, the moral to this rant is to be nice to nurses because you never know when they may be asked to save you.

My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon called me this morning before 8:00 AM. I was surprised that she was up that early and I was also surprised that she would have a need to speak to me because we exchanged five or six emails last night. It was an interesting conversation.

“Reinhardt, are you at work now?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want to ask you a question.”

“Oh, I thought you were calling to say, ‘I love you’.”

Slight pause.

“I love you,” and then she went on with her questions without missing a beat. In the end, I agreed to help her on her next little project. I don’t think my time will be more than an hour and I probably have that much time to spend on her in my schedule.

Woman of the Moment
I believe these photos are from the 2001 Speed Option feature.







Weekend Preview
Another slim weekend for me.

Doug and I will meet up on Saturday to exchange six of my DVDs for him and his friend to use in their classes. I guess it is easier to watch a DVD at home instead of in the library. You can certainly be more comfortable and you can dress any way you want.

After the DVD exchange, we will visit the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers in Westminster for lunch.

Then, the rest of the weekend is going to be devoted to the dissertation, writing some emails, cleaning up my email inbox, cleaning up my hard drive, and maybe doing some cleaning around the house.

Obviously, I will have time on my hands.

I hope you all have a more exciting weekend than I will gentle readers. I will be back on Sunday with a Weekend Update that may include photos from lunch.


Be well and stay happy.

Oh the humanity and irony of it all

Oh the humanity and irony of it all
Less than one week after Stargate SG-1 had its 200th episode air on the Sci-Fi Channel with much fanfare, the Channel announced today that it was not going to renew the series beyond the tenth season. That is some irony.

I was really depressed and bummed out that the series is going to be cancelled. According to the news report, it had a steady viewership that declined slightly when Richard Dean Anderson stepped down two seasons ago and there are ten fan conventions annually. It is or was a popular show or at least I thought that it was popular. The report went on to say that MGM was looking for another channel to air the program on.

I sort of doubt another channel will pick the program up. The Sci-Fi Channel was a natural venue for the series.

On the plus side, my Friday nights will be more open now that Stargate SG-1 is leaving. The spin off, Stargate Atlantis, got picked up for another season so it may move into the SG-1 time slot. Personally, I have yet to acquire a taste for the spin off.

I wonder what the last episode will be like.

Woman of the Moment
These two photos are not from the 2001 Speed Option feature. They both are based on backside views so I thought that they belonged together.



My Friend Sharon
I called my friend Sharon the other day.

She is not Sharon Tay so there is no need to get excited or jealous or just put off a bit about the fact that I live at the beach on Southern California.

Mostly, I wanted to know if she got her birthday card and gift. The last time I spoke to her, she had no received it.

Sharon said that she got right after I called the first time [two weeks ago] about the card. She said she was very excited when she opened the card. Sharon said that she was jumping around and not acting her age at all. I won’t say her age because if I did she might have to kill me. You know that all women, once they are past 21, consider their age to be a top state secret.

Sharon said she called me to thank me for the spa gift certificate. I had to tell her that she didn’t call me. We talked some more about the call that never was. In the end, Sharon said she must have called and left one of her, “Hey Reinhardt, its Sharon, call me,” messages on my phone. Then, when I called her back, she forgot why she had called me in the first place.

That made me feel so swell.
Next, Sharon said she sent me an email. I had to tell her that I never received an email. I know that she has my correct email addresses.

Sharon went on to tell me that she had done some cleaning recently and ran across the thank you cards that she was going to send out last July after her 2005 birthday celebration. I was wondering what happened to the cards, especially since I sent her some stamps last October so she could mail them.

I suppose this does raise one simple question. Is Sharon not very organized and somewhat messy?

Draw your own conclusions.

Sharon did make semi-firm plans to take me to lunch in early September she returns from a week long trip to Oahu and Hawaii with her current boy friend. That will be nice but she still owes me a dinner. I think my chances of winning the lottery are better than collecting from her on the dinner.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

Nostalgia

Nostalgia
Nostalgia is great if you are old. It provides an excellent cover for only being able to remember things that happened a long time ago. I was out getting nostalgic over this past weekend.

I was taking a break from my dissertation project and I was sitting in the sun on the balcony. I wasn’t smoking because the break was not gong to be an hour and a half long. According to my medicine, I should avoid exposure to direct sunlight. That is almost impossible to do in Southern California. That also got me to thinking about another nurse in my life, Nurse Becky.

I met Nurse Becky when I was in the Navy and when my ship was home ported in Yokusuka, Japan. One of the officers’ wives in my duty section worked as a volunteer at the Naval Hospital.

Susie had a lot of time on her hands because the good ship USS Leonard F. Mason was at sea much of the time. Susie got to know all of the young, single nurses; she was always looking for a nurse to set up with one of the young officers in her husband’s duty section. Susie would bring one or two nurses along with her for dinner on the ship when we had the duty section. She said it made the meal much nicer and less male.

That was how I met Nurse Becky.

Nurse Becky was not the first nurse that I had met through Susie. My memory is not strong enough to tell me how attractive she was but I am guessing that she must have been attractive if I can remember her after almost forty years.

I was attracted to Nurse Becky because we were from the same relative area, Southern California. We shared a lot of common experiences growing up and we could have met when we were in high school. We started seeing each other and developed a nice relationship.

Nurse Becky and I were also getting out of the Navy around the same time and we both would be returning to Southern California to get on with our lives. This was close to perfect since neither one of us knew anyone socially at home anymore. Everything was coming together for my future civilian life.

Sometimes, I would swap duty with another officer so I could have more time off of the ship. Becky would come down to the ship for dinner when I had the duty in addition to when she was a regular dinner guest on my regular duty section day.

The enlisted men in my section all knew that I was seeing Nurse Becky. So when she came on board, they would take directly to the wardroom [officers’ dining area on the ship] and then come tell me that she was on board. One night, I was waiting at the gangway for Becky to show up when one of my own men started kidding me about Nurse Becky. I ended the running commentary by pointing out that Nurse Becky loved to give out shots and that I would make certain she was around when we had to go to the hospital for shots. My sailor suddenly changed his mind and found he had other work to do and no longer bother Mr. Reinhardt as he waited for Nurse Becky.

The Navy, as it is prone to do, complicated things for us.

I was transferred to the good ship USS Lucid. This did not affect when I would be released from active duty. It just meant that we would not be seeing each other for a while, a long while, a year or so. We were unhappy about leaving but life happens.

Then, the Navy uncomplicated our lives. The Navy decided to reduce the size of its personnel and release us from active duty early about ten to twelve months early.

Spectacular good fortune for us.

I would be released about two months before Nurse Becky. We planned our first meeting in Southern California when we both would be civilians. The date was in Pasadena because we knew the area and wanted to pretend that we were still young people.

As much as I can remember, we had a great time and planned to go out the next weekend.

Toward the middle of the week, Nurse Becky called to say that she wouldn’t be able to go out with me on Saturday or any other Saturdays or any other days. I was a Caucasian and Becky was a Latina and her parents forbid her to see young men who were not Latinos.

That pretty much ended things with Nurse Becky.

I never kept up with Nurse Becky. There was no reason to because there was no future for us together. I suspect that my parents would have strongly objected to her as well. The late 1960s were less tolerant for the older generation than today.

Oh well, I guess I can draw the by now obvious conclusion that perhaps I am not destined to date or marry a nurse.

Woman of the Moment
Nurse Becky did not look at all like Aiko Tanaka except for having a dark complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes. These photos seem like they belong together. I have no idea when they were taken.

anhttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=10505218&postID=115628759521490172#d stay happy.

Short Monday

Short Monday Blog Posting
We have Monday Night [American] Football on the tube tonight. I worked over the weekend on the dissertation so I missed my fair share of football.

I saw where the Oakland Raiders rather handily beat the San Francisco 49ers in what one could characterize as a Battle of the Bay. All of this raises the valid question; are the Raiders that much improved or have the 49ers sunk to new and lower depths of despair.

Fascinating corundum isn’t it?

I am not that interested in tonight’s teams; the Dallas Cowboys and the New Orleans Saints. The Cowboys ought to win; they have more talent and a better coach. It will be interesting to see how Heisman winner Reggie Bush will do against professional team.

Woman of the Moment
All of these photos are from the 2001 Speed Options feature in case you want to know.


Lisa the Matchmaker – Part 3
I got an email from Lisa the Matchmaker on Sunday night after I had posted the Weekend Update. I could have gone in and posted an edited comment to the blog. Instead, I decided to save it for a Monday filler.

Lisa said that her candidate to end my singlehoodedness, Liz, has been buried under crisis at her work. I wonder if she works for the Bush Administration. Lisa reassured me that Liz has every intention of calling me. Unfortunately, Lisa was unable to provide any spot along the space – time continuum when this event may take place.

I hope I will not have to wait for all of the planets to align themselves. Maybe I should qualify that by saying all of the major planets to align themselves. Some astronomers are talking about changing the definition of a planet and therefore include a bunch of floating space debris as planets.

Holy Mr. Spock.

Doug
Doug called me last night to let me know how his Sunday afternoon Film Studies seminar went.

Don’t ask me to explain a Sunday afternoon class.

When I was an undergraduate and that was a longtime ago in a galaxy not so far away, Sunday afternoons were supposed to be spent sobering up from the Saturday night fraternity party that lasted until 1:30 AM and then was followed by a very late dinner at the 24 hour Chinese restaurant in downtown. The smart partygoers left the Chinese restaurant before the food fight that usually happened around 3:00 AM.

Anyway.

Doug said that he likes his professor for the most part. It is a small class of maybe 15 students that will probably shrink with drop outs by the next class session. Doug asked the professor if they were going to watch any films by Dario Argento. For those of you who are not in Film Studies or a fan of Italian films, Argento tends to make rather excellent honor films and one of Doug’s favorite directors.

The professor said no, very emphatically. She said she found them disturbing to watch and that she had a bad experience when she was younger. I guess she was traumatized when she was a child.

Doug also wants to borrow two of my DVDs so he can watch them for class at his convenience. I will be lending him F. W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU and Robert Wiene’s THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Both of these films are classic examples of the early German Expressionist period.

I will probably buzz out to the South O.C. and go behind the Orange Curtain on Saturday to drop the DVDs off with Doug. This will give us an opportunity to have lunch at either Albertacos or the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers.

Epic road trip.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

Weekend Update

Weekend Update
This Weekend Update is mostly a collection of short comments and such since I did not do much this weekend. It is hard to write a lot about revising my dissertation. There was not much excitement when I revised the order of some paragraph citations.

Maybe next weekend I will be doing something and I will have something to say for a change.

Visitors
This was an off week for foreign visitors. We have visitors from Slovenia, Canada [3], United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, Abidjan, and Texas [6]. I must have resonated with the Texas readers this past week. We even had one visitor spend 33 minutes reading several blog posting this past week; another reader was here for 17 minutes and a third was here for 12 minutes.

So far, for the month, we have had a total of 208 visitors. Of course, some of these are repeat visitors and you know who you are. If the visitor count trend remains somewhat constant, then we may surpass 300 visitors for the month. That would be nice.

Were you aware that you can post a comment to any blog and that you can make your posting anonymously?

If you do post comment, I will probably post a comment or explanation

Woman of the Moment
The new Woman of the Moment is Aiko Tanaka. She is Japanese and measures 64 inches / 162 centimeters tall and 32 – 23 – 33 inches or 81 – 58 – 84 centimeters according to the Speed Options website [http://www.speedoptions.com/features ] when she was a featured model in July 2001. The Internet Movie Database lists her age as 27.


I have no idea when this photo was taken. It certainly looks like a very uncomfortable dress to me.

Aiko Tanaka has appeared, briefly I believe, in MISS CASTAWAY [2004] as Miss Japan, fairly far down the cast credits; THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT #2 [2006] as a cowgirl at the starting line, also far down in the cast credits list; and WHITE AIR [2006 just completed] as Snow Bunny, again fairly far down in the list of cast credits.

I will be among the first to admit that I have not seen any of her films. I think they would have to be viewed the remote control in hand so the showing could be paused. This would give me a better opportunity to see her on screen.

Some of the photos that I will be tossing up here date from the July 2001 Speed Options online feature and the rest are in between then and now. I will make a reasonable effort to identify the 2001 circa photos. The other photos are open to speculation

For those of you that have a greater interest in learning more about Aiko Tanaka, you can visit her website [http://www.aikotanaka.com ].

Watchless
My white tan stripe on my wrist is about faded away now. I think that I can go without a wearing a watch and still feel comfortable. I have found there are enough alternative time pieces in my life to keep me on track with what I have planned to do.

This computer’s clock in the corner is one of those devices.

Rational Thoughts
Gun control means using two hands. Georgia bumper sticker.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember playing and listening to 78RPM records. Then, I thought 45RPM records with their fat hole in the middle were the greatest step forward in recordng technology.

Building Fire Drill
The building where I work had its annual fire drill on Wednesday after noon. I missed the drill because I only worked a half day then. I do not need any drills to know how to evacuate a first floor office.

If worst comes to worst, the tower personal computer and then the desk chair go through the window. Then, I will follow them out of the building to the courtyard.

In my misspent youth, I served in the United States Navy on the USS Lucid, an oceangoing minesweeper. Minesweepers are wooden ships. One of my jobs was to be the Officer of the Deck on all complicated maneuvers like leaving port for example. The Officer of the Deck is the officer who tells the helmsman where to steer the ship.

This is not necessaarily an honor. Usually, it is the Officer of the Deck who is second guessed at his court martial and punished, assuming he survives the disaster.

The Lucid had just finished some time in a shipyard for repairs. I was taking the ship down the main channel in the harbor. There was a large tanker, loaded to maximum with North Slope Alaskan crude oil for a refinery, coming up the channel. This complicated matters because the channel is not terribly wide and it was also being used as a seaplane landing space. In fact, a seaplane was landing behind the Lucid.

So far everything was fine.

Then, a fire broke out in the engine room. A fire at sea is a bad thing, a fire at sea when the ship can not maneuver is very bad; a fire at sea on a wooden ship that can not maneuver and the other ship in the channel is a fully loaded oil tanker is probably the worst possible situation.

My potential Navy career flashed before me and all I could see was a bunch of admirals sitting at my court martial. Fortunately for me, the fire was a very minor one that produced more smoke than anything else.

My only concern after the fire was out was how I was going to write all of this up in the Ship’s Log as required by Navy Regulations.

The Captain had the solution; he always did and that was why he was the Captain.

The Captain suggested that I write up the fire as a fire drill in the engine room while leaving port. That was brilliant. It meant that all I had to do was to record the start and end of the drill. The engine room fire was reduced to two, half line entries in the Ship’s Log.

The Chief Engineer and I had several beers in the Long Beach Naval Station Officers’ Club after work that day.

I see I did digress somewhat away from the building fire drill.

Anyway and back to the building fire drill.

The city fire marshal had said they would cite anyone who did not evacuate the building. They sounded very serious; I definitely would have been one of the first ones out if I had been there.

Apparently five coz class girls, dressed in black as usual, chose to blow off the fire drill and evacuation. They would have had to walk down three flights of stairs. The fire marshal caught them and issued citations to each of them for USD$1,500 each. That is a real penalty and real money. I wonder how they will be able to pay the fines.

Sometimes, it pays to follow the rules of the drill.

United States Navy
Since I have mentioned the ships I served on when I was on active duty in the Navy, I decided to post a couple of photos of the USS Leonard F Mason and the USS Lucid. Both ships have been decommissioned and stricken from the Navy List.



This photo is from 1966, just before I joined the ship. The photo was taken in Hong Kong.

The Mason was transferred to Taiwan in the early 1990s after her active duty ended. She was disposed of by Taiwan and became an artificial fish reef in 2000. I suppose that is a better fate than becoming so many razors blades.



This is a mid-1960s view of the ship.

The Lucid was sold off to a private owner. The ship is in process of restoration as a memorial for the wooden hulled minesweepers.

Hemlines
As you all know, I do look out into the building courtyard from time to time. Most of the time that I look out is when I am on the telephone with a vendor. Sales people can talk for an eternity and I prefer to have something to occupy my mind while I listen as they drone on and on.

I have noticed a recent trend with skirt hemlines lately. It seems that the new or current fashion trend is to have what looks like unfinished hemlines or hemlines that were not sewn together uniformly. I suppose there is a valid reason for this but I have not seen any logic to the style yet. This style seems to expose more of a woman’s leg than would otherwise be the case.

I do want to be perfectly clear that I favor short skirts but only as long as the woman cane properly wear the short skirt.

I also want to categorically state that I also oppose women who wear short skirts without any thought how they may look. I saw one woman the other day in the building; she was wearing one of those ragged hemline skirts. I do not know and I absolutely do not care if it was riding up or that was the way the skirt was made. Her legs, when viewed from behind, looked like hideously overstuffed sausage casings. It was a most unpleasant image; I can assure you of that.

Lisa the Matchmaker Part 2
I had sent off my biography and a couple of recent photos to Lisa the Matchmaker so she could forward them on to her next match for me, Liz.

I was thinking about this decision of mine to participate in the matchmaking as I was driving out to my Dissertation Committee Chair meeting. I often think about other things when I am driving and the traffic is stopped for some reason.

Maybe I should have listened closer to what Lisa was saying to me about Liz. Lisa said that Liz told her that it had been a long time since she had been out with a man. I think the time period was around ten years. Lisa said that Liz was not particular about what we might do when we went out. The event could be as simple as a cup of iced coffee at Starbucks.

Ten years!

Ten years is a long time between evenings out with a man. Is this some cryptic warning to me that I ought to pay a whole lot more attention to? Should I have decided to run like hell for the hills and hide out until this matchmaking episode passed me bye?

These are interesting ideas to consider and mull over in one’s mind.

I guess I am committed to at least one meeting with Liz. Iced coffee at Starbucks can not be too terribly bad for me. I always have the Woman of the Moment photos to reassure me that all is right with the world somewhere; just not where I was for a brief period of time.

Lisa also mentioned that Liz is from New York City. That means she will talk different from me and a lot faster than me. I tend to speak slowly because I want to choose my words precisely and accurately. Sometimes I will pause in the middle of a sentence while I think of the most appropriate word to complete my thoughts. I wonder if this will pose a problem for me and for Liz.


This looks like a good place to stop. I hope you all had a great weekend. I may come back and some more material to the blog on Sunday and then again I may not.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Woman of the Moment
Today’s posting brings us to the end of Miki Black as the Woman of the Moment era. I will be putting a new Woman of the Moment up over the weekend so you can look for her in the Weekend Update on Sunday the 20th.






Dissertation
I had a meeting with my Dissertation Committee Chair last night as you all know from reading the Tuesday blog.

Aside from an ugly, nasty drive to school, the meeting went very well for me. I do need to rewrite my first chapter but the errors are relatively minor ones and this is not a major project. My Chair said that Chapter 1, the dissertation introduction, often is rewritten after the research has been completed. The introduction needs to match up to the research results.

My Chair gave me some new ideas on how to measure my research material. The new measure is very precise and easier for the survey respondent to process. Anything to make the respondent’s job easier is a great help for me.

Another professor was invited to join the discussion. He offered me a couple of suggestions on how to improve the likelihood of my research survey being responded to by the target audience. I’m not certain if I can apply all of his suggestions or not but I will use all that I can.

I explained how I was approaching Chapter 2 to my Chair. He liked the organizational structure and approach. This will be a big help for me. My Chair also answered a couple of nagging questions about structure and style that I had been pondering. Unfortunately for me, the answers did not go my way.

The Chapter 1 revision is going to be the bulk of my weekend activities.

Dinner at Morton’s
I decided yesterday morning, well after I posted the Tuesday blog, that I deserved to go to Morton’s in Santa Ana / Cost Mesa for my dinner. I was going to be very close to Morton’s, less than a mile and a little more than a kilometer away for my Dissertation Committee meeting.

Morton’s had sent me an email reminder about the current month’s special dinner on Tuesday.

I was going to be in the area at dinner time.

Besides, I figured my meeting would be over around 6:00 PM and it was. There would be only horrible traffic for the drive home. The drive home would be much better after I had a nice dinner at Morton’s.

When I made my reservation, I asked for either Amy or Lily as a server. Doug and I like these two servers with Amy as our favorite server. We prefer them over all of the others. This is not to say that the other servers are not any good; they are good and do an excellent job and make the meal pleasurable.

Amy and Lily “just do it®” better, that’s all.



I’m going to assume you can figure out who is Lily on your own. This was taken in May of this year.

I was so happy that Lily remembered me from when Doug and I were there in May for the annual Chuckay Celebration. Lily made my meal last night a real treat and very enjoyable. I appreciated this even more because this was the first time that I had eaten at Morton’s by myself.

My past experience as a single dinner in nice restaurants has been something that was a cross between a trip to Devil’s Island and dining in the isolation ward where the server stumbles past your table by mistake. I think the skeletons in the desert have more attention than a single diner.

Lily made it a point to make certain that I had a good time. Lily succeed very well in her mission.

Doug and I have only one fear about going to Morton’s. Our biggest fear is that both Amy and Lily will stop working there and then we will have to find a new favorite server and that is not something that we want to do.

Doug and I have been going to the Morton’s in Santa Ana / Costa Mesa for probably ten or more years and we have never had a bad experience. We can definitely recommend it completely and without reservation. We can also recommend asking for either Amy or Lily as your server.

Just don’t ask for them when we are going to be there.

For those of you who are new to the blog since May, Chuckay is a month long celebration of all things Chuck. May is also my birthday month. Doug observes the traditional Douguary Festival. Most of the observances of the celebrations are food related and Morton’s is always the closing event of the celebrations.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when eight inch floppies were used in computers.


I have some more some stuff but I think I will save that for the Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy.

Well Rested Writer

Well Rested Writer
I did go to bed earlier than normal at around 8:30 PM last night. I definitely needed the extra rest and I felt much better this morning. This ought to be a reasonably decent blog posting.

Programming Note
I may not have a blog posting tomorrow night. I have a meeting with my Dissertation Committee chair tomorrow late afternoon – early evening. Since it is in South Orange County and will not end until around 6:00 PM, I may not get home in time to put a posting up.

I just wanted to let you know so you won’t be alarmed if you visit here tomorrow and find nothing new to read.

Woman of the Moment
Here are three more images of the current Woman of the Moment.






Lisa the Matchmaker
My friend Lisa from where I used to work wants to play matchmaker again.

Lisa the Matchmaker, if you will recall, introduced me to Nurse Beth and we all know how much of a disaster that turned out to be. She asked me to try again.

Dating is a lot like riding a bicycle. Even though you may fall, you have to get up and get back on the bicycle or you will never become confident enough to rise well. Yes, I did get a nasty scrape on my knee the last time I was out but I am better now. I am ready to get back on the dating bicycle.

Dating is a lot like hunting ducks; if you through up enough flak and buckshot, you will eventually bring something down. This is not my original idea. One of my fraternity brothers, “Python” Bob Scalley, from university coined the phrase. I won’t go into how he got the nickname of “Python.”

Liz is the next player on Lisa the Matchmaker’s team in the continuing game of ending Charles’ singlehood.

Liz has a cell phone and an email account so we can communicate. She has something that equates with normal working hours, Monday through Friday, so I do not have to consider rearranging my life to accommodate her schedule. Liz does live a ways away from me; maybe 30 miles / 48 kilometers and at least an hour or more on the road unless I am driving very early in the morning or very late at night.

I sent Lisa a summary sheet about me and a couple of recent photos of me. Now, I just have to sit back and wait and see what develops.

Coz Class Girls and Revolving Doors
The courtyard door to the office building where I am working now includes a revolving door and two regular style of doors, one door on each side of the revolving door. The revolving door is a normal revolving door with four sections to it. Each section seems to be just the right size for one person with the usual carryon bags.

From time to time, I have noticed that, for some unknown reason, the cosmetics class girls want to double up and squeeze two people into a section. This certainly seems illogical and silly to me. I keep thinking that one of these days someone will get stuck in the door. The door will operate much faster with one person in each section and the regular doors will work just as well and even more people can enter the building through an open door.

Today, it happened.

Two coz class girls, both with blonde hair, got stuck in the revolving door. They were carrying more carryon bags than any airline would allow, even before the most recent security fuss. The second coz class girl was carrying a large bag of cosmetics stuff I guess. Her bag got caught between the door panel and the door frame.

The door came to a sudden halt and the girls bounced into one another abruptly. They could not go forward and they could not go backward. They were stuck. I think the situation was made much worse by the laughs and smirks from their friends who were going to the same class and walking pass them through the regular doors.

Finally, a building engineer came and freed up the door enough so that they could pull the carryon bad that was stuck inside and allow the door to rotate again.

The entire episode reminded me of something that the Three Stooges would try to do; Larry, Moe, and Curly would have done a better job of the comedy.


Be well and stay happy gentle readers.

Sleepy Time

Sleepy Time
I stayed up way too late last night and woke up way too early today. Five or barely six hours of sleep is no fun for a full day.

So guess what gentle readers?

This will be a short posting tonight. I put up a good posting last night so I decided to cut myself some slack and get a good night’s sleep. I need to be nice to me for a change. I deserve the rest.

Tomorrow will be a better posting. I will be fully rested instead of falling asleep on the keyboard and having the Trackball make an impression on my forehead.

Woman of the Moment Encore
This is worth something. You don’t have to scroll down to see this image.



Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

Visitors
It was another good week for foreign visitors. We had eight locations represented; Canada [4], Ireland, Croatia, United Kingdom, Poland, Texas [5], Germany, Brazil, Czech Republic, Australia, and Peoples Republic of China. I think this is the first time the blog has had a visitor from the PRC and Croatia. I do try to correct if a foreign visitors makes multiple visits to the blog; I would not want to distort the record.

AZUMI
I put up some photos of Ueto Aya, the star of AZUMI last week. They were both small and not very interesting. I went to Google Images and found three photos that offer much better images of Ueto Aya. If I find some more and better photos, I may bring Aya back as a Woman of the Moment.







I can see why she has more commercial endorsements in Japan than any other celebrity. Not too bad for a 21 year old young woman.

Woman of the Moment
This image reminded of the great film AMERICAN BEAUTY. It deserves to be featured by itself.



Microsoft
I phoned the Microsoft California Class Action claims administrator this morning. I found out that I can use the award up until September 16, 2010. This means I just picked up an additional 10% or more discount to my next laptop.

I was checking out new laptops this afternoon only because Dell sent me an email about a sale they were holding now. I played around with the specifications and discovered I could pick up a Dell laptop with 2GB of RAM with a 1.8 MHz clock speed from an Intel Centrino Dual Core processor chip, a 60GB combination CD – DVD player burner, 17 inch / 43 centimeter high definition screen, and very nice graphics card for around USD$1,500.

This machine has no software other than Windows XP Professional and that is fine with me because I can load my copies of Office XP and they will run just fine until I get around to buying the new VISTA operating system and maybe the Office VISTA or whatever it will be called. VISTA will probably be in the fourth quarter of next year.

Microsoft and Geography
I use the Office Suite that includes Word. I think most of you use it as well.

Have you ever noticed how selective Microsoft is about auto-spell checking country names in a Word document? I will be the first to admit that I am a sloppy typer and I often miss the Shift key. I noticed that if you type Canada in all lower case letters, Word will automatically correct the spelling and capitalize the leading “C.” But, if you type a word like japan, it will only highlight the misspelling.

It would seem to me that the people in Redmond could figure out that Japan might be typed more frequently than Canada and provide for an auto correct function in Word. Do the folks in Redmond not like Japan but like the Japanese. Japanese will be automatically corrected in Word.

My Bad Typing Skills
I never really learned how to type when I was in high school.

Learning how to type in high school was an ordeal for me. First of all, we had to use big, office grade, manual typewriters. You really had to hit the keys to make it work.

Second, I took typing during Summer School when it was a gazillion degrees outside and there was no air conditioning in the class room except for when the door was open. My seat was about as far away from the door as anyone could be so I sort of sat there and soaked in my own sweat.

But the real reason that I did poorly in typing was Maureen Strong. Maureen sat next to me in the class. She would wear shorts to class because it was hot. Doug would say she was hot. Having to spend a couple of hours a day for a couple of weeks in one Summer sitting next to an incredibly attractive young woman will distract any young man. I think I spent more time looking at Maureen that I did at the teacher.

I am pretty sure I got a “D” in typing but I did not care. I spend the Summer or part of it next to Maureen Strong. That made it all worthwhile for me.

I wonder what ever became of her after we graduated from high school.

Verizon.net and SPAM
I will give Verzion.net full credit for cutting back on the level of spam that is floating across my email inbox on a daily basis. I think the volume is less than a dozen pieces of spam in a day, if that much.

If I got my personal act together and dropped some newsletters that I no longer read or have any interest in, I could cut the clutter down even more. Maybe I will work on that this weekend if I have some slack and spare time.

After about a month with Verizon, I am pleased with the overall performance. It is stable and reliable. The promised connection speeds are there and I am happy for now.

Lunch with Doug
We went to Fatburger for lunch and then we went to Peet’s Tea and Coffee for a discounted iced coffee drink. The drive to South Orange County was much better today; no major crashes and no burning bridges to deal.

I drove at the full freeway speed of 70 miles per hour / 115 kilometers per hour. I could have driven faster if I wanted to but why risk the chance of meeting the California Highway Patrol and getting a citation for speeding. It was not worth the risk.

I had a Kingburger with cheese and chili and chili cheese fries today. I wanted to see how Fatburger compared with the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers; the Original Tommy’s Hamburgers wins hand down and going away. No contest at all. Still, it was a fine burger and tasty.

This is what my meal looked like at the start and towards the end.







I was having a bad hair day since I had been wearing a baseball hat for a couple of hours



I think there are three or four levels of hamburgers in the United States or at least in my little corner of it. I will admit that I have not tried a Whataburger from Houston although I am told that it is an epic meal.

First is the original Tommy’s Hamburgers
Second is Fatburger
Third is In n Out
Fourth is everything else

Fatburger Food Runner and Doug
I think the young woman who brought our food to the table was interested in Doug. She came bye our table twice trying to push a vanilla milk shake off on us. The first time she came bye, Doug showed her the receipt that had no shake of any kind on it.

The facts did not discourage her at all because she came back shortly with the same question. I think she has a career in politics waiting for her considering her splendid ability to ignore obvious and plain facts.

Pamela, the food runner, was attractive in a young sort of way I think. Personally, the pierced lower lip and the stud in her tongue were ways to increase my interest in her.

Peet’s Coffee and Tea
The iced coffee drinks were ok. I don’t think I would make the trip to Peet’s in Laguna Niguel again with Doug for a free coffee drink. I will stick with Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf for my coffee drinks; I think Doug will do the same.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope you had a fun weekend.

Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Preview

Weekend Preview
The weekend is not going to be very busy for me.

The new roof is on the building so the noise from the workers is over and their debris has been hauled away. I will be able to write on Saturday. I am trying to get in four or five pages for the dissertation. That would be a nice result.

My lunch with Doug got postponed or shifted to Sunday. He has some plans to hang out with his friends on Friday and he was uncertain about when he would get home from the event. My guess is that his arrival time at home will be in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday. Doug does not like to be faced with the prospect of having to get up on less than ten or more hours of sleep. It is easier for us to do lunch on Sunday.

I will go to a local office supply company over the weekend. They are having a 10% off anything you can fit in a brown paper bag sale. This is when I buy my printer paper and Cross pen ink cartridges for the coming year.

Microsoft
I think it was last year sometime that I received a notice that I might be a victim in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft. I guess I filed a claim.

Fast forward to yesterday’s mail.

I got a notice from the claims administrator. My claim had been accepted and the value of my claim was determined to be $158.00. I have no idea how they came up with that value.

Cool. Then, I read the Settlement Notice completely.

In order to claim my award, I have to provide the claims administrator with receipts for stuff that I have purchased since 2003 that totals $158.00 or more. This is no easy task. I do not keep my receipts once I determine the product works as it is supposed to and the warranty period has expired.

I also do not have many of my receipts because they were submitted to claim rebates. I just scored a $70.00 rebate on a $79.00 purchase from Symantec.

Tomorrow, I will have to call the claims administrator and see if the award would apply to something I might buy this weekend. Of course, I do not know what stuff that I need now. The award does not cover printer supplies or other consumable supplies.

I was not planning any major software purchase anytime soon. I plan to wait until after Microsoft VISTA has been released and most the troubles are identified and solved before I purchased that operating system so that is maybe the second half of 2007. I had been thinking about buying a new laptop around the first of the year so $158.00 would be close to a 10% discount off of the laptop price.

Woman of the Moment
I just wish thumbnail photos were not really thumbnail size. These photos are set to display at the largest size in Blogger.com. I could try to enlarge the image but that produces mixed results that are generally not that good.








The next Woman of the Moment has mostly larger sized images so that viewing will not be as much of a pain.

Visitors
We had one visitor so far this week who managed to be fascinated by my scribblings. The visitor was on the blog for fifteen minutes in one session.

More Thoughts on Giving Up the Courtyard Views
I thought of another plus to my upcoming work location change. I will not be able to look at tats on young women. This is a plus for me. I will also miss out on the cosmetics class women. This is fine since some of them try to pack too much body into too small of an outfit. I am not a fan of over exposed flesh.

I will miss out on seeing some of the more attractive young smokers from Japan Air Lines. I had thought this would be a major low point for me.

I was convinced that I would miss this until I saw one of the young smokers today. It looked like she had just returned from a vacation trip. I saw her leave last week in her way too short hip hugger skirt and belly tee shirt. She had a nice flat stomach and life was good for me.

Today, I noticed that she had put on some weight while she was away and there was a less than pleasant looking bulge at the top of her way too short skirt.


I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will be back on Sunday with the Weekend Update.

Be well and stay happy.

Bad Day at Blackrock

Bad Day at Blackrock
It was a bad day for me today in the area of job searching and interviewing. I did not get offered the lending position that I had applied for where I am working now.

Bummer.

The client hired someone and he will start on August 28th. I will be gone by the 25th then. That is depressing. On top of not getting the position, I will also have to give up the office with the courtyard view. That is also depressing for me, especially with Summer in full swing and warm weather abounding. I hope you will all understand if I am less than glib today with the blog posting. I ought to be better tomorrow with the Weekend Preview blog posting.

On the plus side, I did get two new job suggestions today that are both promising and ones that I can easily fill.

Woman of the Moment
We can’t close without a couple of the Woman of the Moment photos to make the visit worthwhile.






Be well and stay happy.

More Rational Thought

More Rational Thought
“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day." Frank Sinatra, American singer and philosopher.

Woman of the Moment
A Woman of the Moment who likes dogs has to be almost dead solid, perfect in all respects.





I will admit that those two dogs look really ratty; I don’t think I will ever own an American Hairless Terrier. A dog should not embarrass you when you take it for a walk in the evening or for any other time. I don’t think I would want to be seen at PetCo with those dogs.

Crazy Woman from Argentina
I will admit that I am lazy and I sometimes leave my connection to the Internet open when I am not at the computer or at work or anyplace else. I have unlimited DSL service so I don’t see any need to turn my laptop off.

Yes, I know I could save some electricity but the laptop does not use all that much to begin with. My total electrical use for the last period was only 378 kilowatts. That is not very much. The big reason why my electrical use is so small is that I do not have any air conditioning beyond opening or closing a window.

Anyway and back to the central point of the story, I was contacted by a crazy woman from Argentina last week. I was actually flamed. I can’t put up most of what she said because this blog could be read by minors.

The bulk of her complaint was that I was not responding to her persistent entries to my ICQ account. I think she felt that I was being another rude and crude American. I think a lot of people make that false assumption.

I was ignoring her because I was not home and I was in the office, pounding out a policy for my client. I did have my ICQ status showing that I was “N/A” as in Not Available.

Hello Bambi from Cordoba. What part of Not Available was unclear to you? I know that you understand English because your flaming used the usual colorful English words correctly.

On the plus side, being at work was a good thing. It saved me from having to deal with Bambi from Cordoba and it prevented from even considering a trip to Argentina any time in anything that resembles the near future.

This event also illustrates why I am happy as a single man now.

Doug
I spoke to Doug after the Sunday Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball game. He was happy because the Angels won and won easily.

We have tentatively set up our lunch for next Saturday at Fatburger. Doug has not been there in a long time and is ready for it. I have not been to Fatburger in well over a month now so I can enjoy a Kingburger with chili and some chili cheese fries.

I got a coupon in the mail from a local coffee shop chain, not Starbucks, which was a buy one get one free promotion. The chain has a store near, well sort of close, to the Fatburger we will be going to. I talked Doug into going there because he likes iced coffee drinks and what’s not to like about saving money.

My Friend Sharon [not Sharon Tay]
I phoned my friend Sharon to see how she was. We had not talked live in over a week; we did exchange some voice messages. She was offline so I left her a message and asked if she was going to the Tofu Festival in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles this coming weekend.

Yes, there will be a weekend long Tofu Festival in the old Japanese section of Los Angeles. I think this is something like the tenth or more annual Tofu Festival. The Festival will feature cooking demonstrations and other traditional Japanese activities.

I had no idea that tofu was so exciting.

Sharon called me after she got home.

She said that she was not going to the Tofu Festival and “thank you Charles for telling me about it.”

Sharon said that Doug and I should visit a restaurant in South Orange County that is an all you can eat Italian restaurant. Sharon said that Maggino’s was a perfect place for us; she said we could have as much fried calamari as we could eat.

I hated to tell Sharon that neither one of us like fried squid very much.

Sharon said we should still go there because eating beef all of the time is not the healthiest of food choices and that fish and chicken were good alternatives.

I decided to skip Doug’s T-Rex analogy about where T-Rex survived rather well for 65 million years on a diet of mostly meat.

Sharon said that we should have lunch or dinner now since we have the time. I said that I would love to go to dinner with here; especially since she invited me to dinner a year and a half ago. She said that she would take me to dinner. Being happy and hungry, I said that I could be available most any day. We will see when Sharon takes me to dinner.

I should put a photo of Sharon up in the blog so you can see who she is and maybe understand why I like her so much. She will probably object and get upset. Women are like that sometimes.


Be well and stay happy.

Waiting for the cable guy - Part II

Waiting for the Cable Guy
The cable guy was supposed to show up between 5:00 and 7:00 PM to run the new cables. He showed up at 6:40 to say that he did not need to run a new cable after all. He was able to fix my neighbor’s system without the new cable.

All of this leads me to wonder if the cable guys know what they are doing when it comes to service and repairs. Also, does this mean they are merely going to delay the inevitable replacement of my cable to sometime in the future when it is financially better for them to do so?

Tamlyn Tomita
Just as soon as I changed the Woman of the Moment, I found a couple of photos of her when she is smiling. Obviously, they were taken at different times





I had time to kill while I waited for the cable guy. I didn’t want to start my dinner only to have it interrupted by the cable replacement project, get cold, be reheated in the microwave, and generally taste extremely bland. Doug has suggested that I try Google Images. I had gone there before and not had much luck. I tried it again and came up with these smileys. I did have to wade through all eleven pages of images to find them but I feel the effort was worth it for you gentle readers.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember when Velcro was a novelty. Products were advertised as using Velcro to distinguish them from their competitors.

Short Posting
I know this is a short posting. Life happens; deal with it.

I will be back tomorrow with a longer and hopefully more interesting posting and some more photos of the current Woman of the Moment.


Be well and stay happy.

Programming Note

Programming Note
I may not have a blog posting for Monday night. The cable guys are coming back on Monday between 5:00 and 7:00 PM to run new cables to the unit above me and to my unit. This will probably make a mess of my evening and the opportunity to toss out a blog post.


Be well and stay happy.

Weekend Update

The Cable Guy
The cable guy finally showed around 5:40 PM or about forty minutes late on Friday. On the plus side, I did not need a new cable box. He was able to fix things by boosting the signal strength to my cable box. No new cable box and I was fixed and back in business.

On the minus side, he told me that Time Warner is going to replace the cables to the two units above me. Normally, I could care less what happens above me so long as they are quiet. Unfortunately for me, their cables run through one of my closets. This means the workers will have to have access to my closet to complete the cable replacement. I am going to be faced with the choice of giving up part of my work day or sacrificing part of my Saturday to accommodate the workers.

Neither choice is very desirable for me.

Rational Thought
Beer is proof that Gods loves us and wants us to have a good time. Benjamin Franklin, American inventor, writer, and statesman.

Carbon Dating Myself
I can remember there were no pop top beverage cans. I can also remember dating the inventor’s daughter when I was in college.

Lunch with Vivian
I had lunch with Vivian the Office Assistant and budding financial analyst from where I used to work on Friday. Spending time with Vivian is one of the best ways that I can think to pass time.

We went to the local restaurant next door to the office because it is convenient and we could get in during her lunch time. Vivian likes late lunches so that works out fine next door. I had a large salad for lunch with some iced tea and one slice of bread. I had no dessert because I am eating healthier now.

My healthy eating has produced a slow and steady weight loss. I do not have any weight loss goals. I am just happy with the loss so far. Vivian and Evelyn both remarked favorably on my weight loss and how good I looked. Their comments made me feel even better. They both gave me a big hug and that is a nice way to start lunch.

Lunch, like all lunches with good friends, did not last long enough for me. I could have spent the rest of the afternoon talking with Vivian while she worked. The thought of the dreadful drive home on the 405 Freeway at the start of the weekend brought me back to reality in hurry.

I promptly left the old office and headed home after we finished our lunch.

Vivian is changing her hair style. When I first met Vivian in 2004, she was wearing it long, down below the middle of her back. It was nice. Then, after I was laid off in 2005, Vivian cut her hair so that it was very short so that it was barely to her ears; I thought she looked incredibly beautiful then. On Friday, I saw that she is letting it grow out a bit. Her hair was in a funky sort of in transition that was neither long nor short. I think it will end up around her shoulders and that look should be dead solid perfect. Of course, I have no votes in the how Vivian’s hair should look election.

I should ask Vivian if I can post her photo in my blog. Unlike the periodic Babes or Women of the Moment, Vivian is the real thing only better than Coca Cola and just as sweet.

Woman of the Moment
As you can tell, we have a new Woman of the Moment. She is Miki Black, a model and singer. I must admit that I have never heard any of her songs but then I tend to listen to a Classic Rock and Roll radio station. The station plays songs that were hits before she was probably born.






According to her website [http://www.ohmiki.com], young Ms Black is 63 inches / 160 centimeters tall and measures 35-22-34 inches / 89-58-86 centimeters. Very nice indeed.

I was able to download lots of photos of Miki Black and that was good. The bad side, and there always must be a bad side to balance the good side, is that they are small photos so I will double up on the photos. I trust there will be no complaints.

Donut Friday
It was Donut Friday on Friday.

Yummy.

Everyone was on a short term sugar high from the donuts. One of the women in the office asked me to pick up a special one for her. It was not difficult at all but when she saw it, wrapped in paper napkins, on her desk when she came in, she was just so happy that I had remembered her donut request and that it was all there for her, ready to eat.

Buying a dozen donuts is not going to make or break me. It is however a very useful way to build links with the staff so that when you ask them to do something beyond what is normal for you, more often than not, they will gladly do what you ask of them.

I exercised some minimal restraint and had a maple covered bar. I know that it was directly responsible for a big jump up in my blood sugar count for Friday morning. I watch what I eat and I try to cut out most of the sugars when I can. I do allow myself one donut a month. That will not kill me; some months I will have more if I go to a breakfast meeting and there are pastries available for the attendees.

Sugar high in the morning and lunch with Vivian and then a crash in the evening.

School and the Dissertation
I did not get much written because the roof workers were here on Saturday. Then on Sunday, Doug and I were supposed to go to lunch. I took the rest of the day off and rested and read after lunch was rescheduled.

Market
I had to go to the market at the end of the week because I was running out of food in the place.

Some of my friends have suggested that I could meet Ms Right or Ms Wonderful while searching for a cantaloupe melon or the right piece of fresh fish. I must be picking the wrong time to go to the market. Most of the women that I see in the market are just not for me.

It is very difficult for me to become even modestly interested in a woman who makes no effort to make her self presentable. I am all for exercising and that stuff but I draw the line at coming directly from the gym, all hot and sweaty, to do the food shopping. That just does not excite me at all.

Then, there are some others who signal me to not even bother. I know to not consider and avoid a woman who has a large bag of cat food or a large amount of cat food cans in her shopping cart. She is a cat person and I just do not get along with a cat person. I suspect that I never will be able to get along with a cat person. I do not think that it makes any difference whether she has only one or two cats or a whole mob of cats.

If I had paid attention to my beliefs, I would have never ever become involved with the woman that the Princess hated and Doug did not care for. She was a cat person; she had two cats when I first meet her.

Calendar
I went out shopping for a calendar for next year today. It looks like I will be back to Office Depot in another month to pick up the 2007 edition of the simple, spiral bond calendar that I have been using for twelve years. I hate having to write the times off day in but I refuse to pay for something that is not right for me.

I was in Barnes & Nobles’ local bookstore after I ran some errands Saturday morning. The really nice looking leather bond calendar, complete with times of day and only one year’s worth of weeks, doesn’t look like it will lay flat on my desk. The ability to lay flat is a key decision criterion for me.

The leather calendar certainly looks very nice and rich. But, for me, I am more interested in how well it is likely to perform in an office environment.

Hamburgers with Doug
Lunch on Sunday got postponed to next weekend.



That is a Kingburger from Fatburger; I would have had that for lunch.

Doug’s friend Robin had an extra ticket to the Angeles baseball game this afternoon. Since the game starts at about 1:00 PM, that effectively kills off any lunch plans that we had made. We are set to go do lunch on either Saturday or Sunday. My preference would be for Saturday so that I can get everything done then and be able to sleep in on Sunday morning like I did today.

Komyo Ga Tsuji
This is the Japanese historical serial that I have been watching for the last few months. I have been meaning to toss up a comment or two about it but keep forgetting to do so.

Last night was a tipping point in the story line; the young samurai that series revolves around distinguished himself in a pitched battle to seize a castle. In the bloody fighting to take the castle, his oldest vassal dies while leading the “forlorn hope” into the castle. He said he is dying happily because his lord now will have a castle of his own.

The old vassal is somewhat like Sir John Falstaff to Prince Hal, based on what I have seen of their relationship through the series. He helps the young samurai lord with his speech to rally his soldiers on the eve of the battle to take the castle. It is certainly no “once more into the breach dear friends, once more” or “Band of Brothers” speech but it must have been effective since they took the castle.

The young samurai had to redeem himself in his master’s eyes. He was lax and allowed the forces in the castle to sally and attack his position. He was able to beat back the attack with some losses. His master, Hadashi Hideyoshi [I think I have it spelled somewhat correctly] told him not to return until he has taken the castle.

It remains to be seen if he will be rewarded with the castle. Precedent and logic seem to argue for him keeping it. Strategically, it is not in the best possible location since it would be on the edge of Hadashi’s territory and thus among the first objectives in the next series of battles by an opposing warlord or clan.

Last night’s show took place in 1588 so it is not too much longer before Japan will launch its attack against Korea. The Korean attack was the basis for the two year, Korean historical series, The Immortal Yee Soon Shin.

I am amazed that, during this series, The Immortal Yee Soon Shin series, and the film, AZUMI, Tokugawa Ieyasu is usually presented as being not very skilled or competent, a minor player on the greater stage of Japan’s history. Yet, in the end, he is the one that the history books seem to remember most.

I am looking forward to next week’s episode to see if the young samurai will receive the castle. It will be interesting to see if the loyalty and sacrifice paid off for him and his family.

Smoking
I decided to give up smoking cigars. Actually, I will stop buying them. I gave up my pipe smoking some fifteen years ago and I have been fine without them. I still have some of my pipes; the ones that have special significance for me. All I do with them is dust them periodically.



I only have two cigars left from my current box. I think I will smoke them over the next month or two. I do not see any reason to toss out perfectly good cigars just because I am going to give up buying the cigars.

My cigar smoking level is not that great anyway. I think I probably smoke around forty cigars a year. If someone were to offer me a cigar sometime in the future, I would accept it unless it looked like a really cheap cigar. I won’t smoke a cheap cigar even if it is a gift.

Visitors
We had a good range of foreign visitors this past week. We had visitors from Canada [6], India [2], Germany [2], United Kingdom [2], Portugal, Japan, and Singapore. We also had two visitors from the Great State of Texas, which often thinks of itself as an independent state.


I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

Be well and stay happy.