A BIG BLOG

Never has the phrase “Viewer Discretion is Advised” been more appropriate.  As in, viewers with any discretion should be advised not to watch this awful show.  I just watched the season premiere of Do Not Disturb.  After seeing the pilot earlier this summer, I wanted to give it a chance to make adjustments and improve.  They did make adjustments….the main plotlines were changed significantly….and yet it was not one whit better.

So, viewers be advised….and skip Do Not Disturb.

UPDATE: Apparently I wasn’t the only one that thought the show sucked.  The show’s own producers agreed.

The best evidence of blatant hypocrisy that I’ve seen in months.

I suppose if nothing else can inspire me to post more often, a shameless plug should at least provide the impetus.  I’ve spent the last seven months writing a book with a few other authors from work.  It is on a very narrow topic and the readership will be somewhat limited to our customer base (and potential customers), but I’m still very proud of it.  Everything became much more real last week when it was posted on Amazon for pre-order.  Here it is:

IBM DataPower SOA Appliance Handbook

Let’s start this comeback right….with a post!  Here’s a fun Opinion piece from the New York Times, with which I tend to agree.  I’ve been amazed that John McCain would come out and tell “irresponsible” homeowners to drop dead.  I consider myself the least irresponsible person I know, and it’s still going to be difficult when our adjustable-rate mortgage starts adjusting in the wrong way.

“His economic thinking — which is, in any form, a brand-new phenomenon — harks back to the time when Republicans all seemed to be elderly rich guys who muttered a lot about bonded indebtedness. The public’s deep lack of enthusiasm for this worldview was what encouraged Reagan to change the subject to optimism and abortion.

The theme for his mortgage speech this week was basically McCain to Homeowners: Drop Dead. It was, he said sternly, “not the duty of the government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly.” The good news, he noted, was that out of 80 million American homeowners, only 4 million are in the tank, while everybody else is “working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets” the way Countrywide Financial intended them to.

He did, however, leave the door open for some vague, amorphous, undefined aid to good homeowners, as opposed to irresponsible ones who … did something irresponsible. Like taking that vacation.

McCain then suggested that the federal government ought to do something about getting regulations off the back of the financial markets and concluded with a call to reduce the corporate tax rate. It was not exactly a rallying cry for the masses.”

Note: You may have to have a NY Times account (free and worthwhile) to read the full story.

I just realized that I’m still getting a couple of hits a day on this blog, even though I haven’t posted here in ages.  For those of you that actually know me, the last year has been a stressful one, and my blogging was limited to some very specific subjects (and was not posted here).  Now that things are starting to get back to normal, I find myself wishing I had a place to vent about random stuff….politics, advertisements, etc.  In the past, this was my place to blow off steam without offending anyone looking for a more mundane review of my day-to-day activities.  I hope it can be that again.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to stick to it, but I’ll give it a shot.  Hope to see you here soon, and I’ll start directing more traffic this way if I can keep up with a steady stream of entries.

It’s been many moons since my last post, and I’m long overdue.  I have a lot to mention….most importantly a new job and a baby on the way.  However, those entries will allow for additional procrastination, and this one will not.

A dear friend of mine has just entered a contest called “The Search for the Next Public Radio Star.”  I realize this is a bit of an oxymoron, but suffice it to say that there is definitely a subculture (of which I am a member) in which working on public radio makes you a star.  The contest involves an online version of a ‘demo tape’ to display the entrant’s humor, professionalism, and on-air talent.  Jenny’s entry takes us to the rodeo, for one of the most dangerous contests this side of the neighborhood jungle gym.  Please take a listen and vote big for Jenny Weddel, America’s Next Public Radio Star:

Naptime Comes to the Rodeo

The danger. The cowboys. The glitter. We all have an idea of what a rodeo entails. But there’s a little-known rodeo event filled with chaos, tears, and mud on the face.

I almost got my first ticket today. However, instead of feeling sheepish and promising to change my evil driving ways, I’m going to rant against the police. A brilliant idea, I’m sure.
There’s an intersection near our house, where Manchester Boulevard meets the 5 freeway, through which much of the south-bound traffic from residential Encinitas/Leucadia has to filter. I won’t bore you with the gory details, but the options are:

1) Use the right lane, which quickly becomes the world’s longest onramp line, stretching at least half a mile.

2) Make an illegal right turn from the left lane (at a stop sign) into the second onramp lane.

3) Continue through the intersection and make an illegal U-turn in either a parking lot or a neighboring street.

Usually, I choose an impatient version of option number 1. I wait until the last minute before changing lanes into the onramp line, even though I get mad at others who do the same. This morning, however, I didn’t make it in and had to continue in the left lane. I considered option number 2, but decided against it for some reason (I’ve only ever done it once). That left me with option 3. I went up to the next street and turned right, hoping to make a U-turn in one of the many illegal U-turn zones.

As I turned the corner and started my U-turn, I realized that there were four other cars parked near the corner, having tickets written for them by two motorcycle police officers. I quickly aborted the U-turn and headed up the street, where I eventually made a 3-point turn in a condo’s parking space. I just barely missed getting a ticket. After making my way back to the onramp and heading for the flow of traffic, I noticed that there was also an officer at the top of the ramp, waving over people who had turned right from the left lane (option #2) so that he could give them a ticket.

In essence, the police (technically, the county sheriff) set up a series of invisible traps for commuters going to work, and could have caught hundreds of people within an hour. Do I think it “serves them right”? NO! On the contrary, effort should be focused on a solution to the underlying problem, rather than on exploiting a weak intersection to catch up on a ticket quota.

The solution is simple: make a right turn from the left lane (choice #2) legal. It would immediately cut the waiting line in half, and wouldn’t have a negative impact on the traffic flow. There are very few cars that come from the opposing direction, so they wouldn’t be delayed much, and there’s a stop sign at the intersection to prevent any accidents or right-of-way conflicts. Don’t punish us for bad design….fix the problem.

Here’s a graphical side note: Manchester Onramp.

I (and half of Encinitas) approach from the right and need to loop around onto the freeway.  The two cars at bottom-center should be able to turn right from where they are, thus making all of our commutes easier.

Here’s a quick traffic tip for all the idiots out there, from someone trying to get used to a daily commute again.

If you are changing lanes from one that is slow-moving into one that is moving faster, presumably so that YOU can go faster, you need to SPEED UP once the lane transition has been made. There are people in the other lane (read: me) that are already moving at a brisk clip and do not want to slam on their brakes just because you don’t understand the concept of traffic-flow dynamics.

‘Nuff said.

The good news: my flights to/from New Jersey on Continental had both televisions and meals…neither of which were to be found on my American flights to Toronto (through Chicago).

The bad news: What passes for comedy on Continental? Hope and Faith, which has been canceled, and Four Kings, which barely made it to air before it was shitcanned. And what passes for cinema? Click (awful, as I’ve already mentioned), Poseidon (a disaster movie while flying?), and Just My Luck (with Lindsay Lohan).

Remind me to bring a book on my next flight.

I recently watched parts of the movie Click for the second time. It was on a plane and without sound, but it reminded me of how much I hated it the first time around. Aside from the bad acting, ridiculously over-the-top plot oddities, and story that went on about twenty years (in the movie) too long, I’ve decided what really bothered me about the movie…it’s the same thing that made me dislike Bruce Almighty, though that at least had better acting. In the end, it’s about poorly planned and implemented superpowers that are completely unrealistic and annoying.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m perfectly willing to believe that a human could be given God’s powers, or that a remote could control the universe. I have no problem with suspension of disbelief. However, these movies producers NEED for things to turn out badly, so that the lead can learn about the true nature of family, hard work, and love. So they end up ruining perfectly good powers with a character that is truly an idiot. Even the daydreamiest twelve year old could come up with better uses for God’s powers. A few example scenes:

1) Jim Carrey gets behind on answering prayers because he’s too busy with his personal life. Ridiculous!  You’re GOD, for….your….sake. Make the prayers all be answered in a manner that you would find fitting, assuming you had the time to answer them all individually. Done!

2) Adam Sandler fast-forwards through years of his life in order to skip to an impending promotion. Stupid! Fast-forward through a particularly boring day at work, and pause when needed to catch up on some late work, but don’t fast-forward through the good stuff, too. Speaking of good stuff, DON’T fast-forward sex with Kate Beckinsale…not even once!  A backrub is worth the payoff, trust me.

Adam Sandler’s character isn’t entirely to blame, though I can’t say the same for Bruce Almighty. Sandler was saddled with a faulty remote control with a flawed feature set. I realize your Tivo might think you’re gay, but even a remote should know not to auto-ffwd through sex.

Also, the remote only really acted on Sandler’s perception of the world, not on the world itself. This means that when he makes David Hasselhoff speak Spanish, or widens him out like a funhouse mirror, Sandler’s the one that looks like an idiot because he’s giggling at nothing. LifeRemote Version 2.0 should actually MAKE him speak Spanish. Let everyone else figure out why.

In the end, it comes down to this…I could do better. So if there are any supreme beings or crazy Christopher Walken types looking for a beneficiary, I’d be happy to demonstrate. Because so far, these powers have been wasted on comedic geniuses.