Continuing Sign of the Times
I was watching the snapshots of people as they flashed by me on he subway this morning. At this early hour, I was sure that they were all going to work of some sort. Packed as they were, they all were part of a group that is fortunate enough to still be employed. I happen to be one of them and joined the train once stopped to become a snapshot for someone else standing and waiting at the platform.
It's still not the "best of times" here in the SF Bay Area. I say this, since my girlfriend just recently lost her job. Most likely, her company is going under, having gone from 130 at the height of the dot-com period down to now; a mere 12 employees. I assume that the next layoff will be final in nature.
The gradual emulsion of jobs into a nearly unfathomable paste seemed to have level out over the last year or so. It seemed that while it wasn't getting any better, it also wasn't getting any worse. I think that, despite what Bushie wants to yammer on about, it is getting worse again. It makes sense. You can only have you Republican buddies get rich from a "jobless recovery" for so long before it starts to have more consequences. These guys only make money when people buy things. The more people without the power to do so, means less money for them and in turn, less profits, which obviously means that more heads have to role.
A few other examples of recent job loss include Providian, which is laying off something like 15,000 people. And then, there is the merger of Bank of America and Boston Fleet Bank, which I'm sure will cost many more countless jobs as part of the merger and overall attrition not being replaced.
John Kerry says that there is job loss, which needs to be stopped. George Bush says that there are new jobs being created and they're both right. It just happens that Bush is leaving out an important fact that new jobs being created is either less than or just 1,000 more than the ones being lost.
The economy isn't growing. The very rich upper class are getting richer, but those of us in Normal Land aren't feeling the pinch. It's too bad that no matter who wins the presidential election in November will be a very wealthy man in control of hordes that neither really have that close an association with the majority of Americans.
22 03 2004 0 comments
Pickles!
Salty, briny pickles are one of the finest things on the face of the planet. Whether used in conjunction with the other elements of a sandwich, or just eaten by themselves, they're one hell of a tasty thing. Naturally, like most things out there, there are varying degrees of pickle quality. Nowhere does this become more apparent than when you go to your typical American grocery store to try and figure which of these you want to get.
Such was the case in a recent spree of dietary fulfillment in which I was confronted by the rather large choice of pickles that are out there. It's funny though, the choice is actually slim, because the vast majority of pickles are these rubbery things you could bounce off the floor. Also in this area of the rubbery pickle is the fact that almost all of the pickles out there use Yellow No. 5! Huh?!! They're putting yellow food coloring in pickles? In fact, it's the same coloring that they use in Mountain Dew of all things. What this is doing in my pickles is beyond me. It seems as is one of the mega-corporations started doing this one day and then everyone else followed along. I don't get it.
Depressed by that fact, I thought my pickle buying was finished, since I didn't want funky coloring stuff in my pickles. Luckily as I was strolling through the cheese isle (one of the few things finer than a properly constructed pickle) when I came across some Clausen pickles. I was a little skeptical of them, since they were the only pickles near the cheese and I didn't think they really had any business being there or claiming to be Kosher when all those other dyed pickles claimed to be Kosher as well.
Getting beyond my doubts, I bought them, took them home, and proceeded to eat the whole jar in an evening. I don't know who bought out the rabbi to call that junk from Vlasic "Kosher", but the guy certifying these salty dogs was definitely on the ball, since they were the ultimate pickle I had been questing for all this time. Ura! Pickles!
21 03 2004 0 comments
The Elisha Burrito Project
It's been really hot here and not in a, "Oh, this is so nice, let's go out and get a tan." kind of way, but in more of a, "This is hell. Let's do like cats and try not to move all day." kind of way. At any rate, as I was eating a fine chunk of guacamole in a burrito from my little burrito place down the street, I was reminded of my good friend, Elisha, who is in Oxford, England right now working on a Masters Degree. Apparently, much to the contrary of our heat wave, Oxford is still having snow and also much to the contrary of our cuisine here, they have no burritos in Oxford. This fact is punctuated by the fact that Elisha typically punctuates any email I get from her with, "Burrito" in some form of pain and longing for that elusive Mexican food.
So, I would propose that if there is a kind-hearted soul taking a flight from New York into Oxford that they would be so kind as to pick up a burrito and deliver it to her. I realize this is a strange request, but once you've had yourself a good burrito, it's hard to live without them again and no, I'm not talking about that garbage from Taco Bell. I'm talking about something that has the words "Taqueria" or "Dos" or "Hombre Hambre" in the name of it.
Naturally, at this point in epicurean lows Miss Elisha has been forced to exist it, a hearty crepe, blini, plattar, burek, tapa, or blintz would even be appreciated, I'm sure. Elisha can you hear me? Are you fading over there? I know your cilanthro count must be getting really low.
Of course I'm just kidding around with all this, since this fine lady will be back in burrito country in no time, once the program is over, but I just get reminded of it every time I sink my teeth into a tasty Burrito Grande with sour cream, cilanthro, black beans, guacamole, and a mean house-made salsa. Mmmmmmmmm....
17 03 2004 0 comments
My Parisian Bathroom
The one thing that I really, really remember about my trip to Paris was the French-specific smell of their cigarettes. Yeah, yeah, I remember a lot of other things as well like the architecture, culture and everything, but the cigarettes really stick out in my mind since there was a non-smoking and a smoking section in my hotel, not that it really makes any difference in the end, since the smokers were of a breed that I have never encountered before. It seems as if they lived off the damned things for their oxygen. But, their cigarettes, while vile, smelled a hell of a lot better than the American cigarettes that you smell oozing off scummy Walmart patrons.
So, how does this all tie into my bathroom? Simple. In my apartment, there are these shafts that run up the building and allow the bathroom window to have somewhere to vent. It just so happens that they really frown on smoking in the building. Naturally, this doesn't stop people from smoking and when they smoke, instead of going outside, they smoke in the bathroom for some reason.
I'm of the opinion that that there is a gay French couple that live some floors down below me. I've heard them speaking French on occasion and I've only ever heard two male voices. At any rate, I think that they like to smoke French cigarettes, because in the evening, when I walk into my bathroom, I suddenly feel like I'm sitting back in my French hotel after a long walk back from Notre Dame. Never thought I wouldn't mind cigarette smoke, but then again, it is French, so I'm sure that tosses some kind of weird flavor into the pie.
16 03 2004 0 comments
Non-Apache is a Death Wish
I have now had to deal with two webservers that weren't Apache and honestly, they're both the worst dogs you've ever seen. A couple of terms are important in understanding this, like webserver which is a machine that has a website setup on it for you to access it. The site that you're reading this on now, is being hosted on a webserver designed to allow you access to the content I write. Apache is a type of program that runs on the webserver and allows you to see the pages that are stored on the webserver. If a restaurant, then Apache would be the waiter.
So, basically, there are only two or at most three types of web programs that anyone really qualifies as valid. The first is the aforementioned Apache, the second is Microsoft Internet Information Services - IIS - (something of a snooty French waiter in my analogy above), and then there are various other ones like those that run on the Sun operating system, iPlanet, which was the one Netscape developed, and this one called Webstar for the Mac.
Besides Apache, I have used IIS, Webstar, and iPlanet. These non-Apache systems are all dogs. They crash for no reason. They corrupt without warning, and they're a monstrous pain to maintain. And, what I mean by a major pain is that on a good day, they stay up for maybe one to two days. That obviously is not good, because even though all the info is still on the server, there is no way for anyone to get it because the system has crashed. This is also a nightmare for the lowly IT guy, since he has to restart the damn thing whenever it crashes and that can make for worse nights of sleeping than if you have a newborn child.
I'm a huge fan of Apache and so are about 70% of the people out there that run websites, since that is the percentage of sites that use it. Why am I a fan? Well, the crashes on a well-designed site are so infrequent, that they are often due to a power or system hardware failure than the program itself. This is also a FREE program, unlike Microsoft IIS, which is many hundreds of dollars to get with the Microsoft server system. Just these two items alone should sell anyone on the system. But, when you toss in the fact that supplemental programs which do just about anything you want have been created and distributed free for this system, you can't beat it.
So, why in the world would anyone use anything else? Simple, Microsoft has basically been giving away their system to try and gain market share. In all honesty, the Microsoft system is much easy to set up in the beginning than Apache, so that's a large appeal for people who don't want to get their hands dirty with Linux/Unix, or deal with a rather complex configuration file for Windows. I guess it's mainly just a problem with short term thinking when you get down to it, since Apache will give you many long nights of sleeping.
At any rate, I've gotta go move some sites from Webstar to Apache, so we'll see how this goes.
15 03 2004 0 comments
The Daily Show
I quote this show too much. I watch it too religiously. I love this show. It seems to be the only way I can digest my news these days, since it gives it to you in a comedic format that doesn't make you want to vomit from what Bushie is doing to the country on any particular day.
I guess you could say that host, Jon Stewart is left leaning and sides with the Democrats, but honestly, if you want to be objective about it, he's a very good host and interviewer who is able to be very even handed with people that are either whacko anarchist left or whacko fascist right. Of course for the most even handed reporting, I recommend the New Hour on PBS. Yes, I know, PBS... but they approach everything by showing both sides of the argument. Not an easy feat.
Anyways, The Daily Show is a triumph. I think their growing success and brilliance comes from the fact that they don't really talk down to the audience, they talk down to themselves. The make fun of themselves and what they report in a fashion that I think only the British are able to top. And, they do all this without stopping to vomit or scatological jokes that they can't seem to resist on shows like Saturday Night Live.
There are of course times when I'm a little frustrated by them because the show they have on is a repeat. But, as they say, they like to take off as much time as he President does. Why only half as much? Well, Dubya has a lot of brush to clear in Crawford, you know.
In all honesty though, the grueling schedule they keep up in producing a humorous show four nights a week must be tough. SNL seems to only be able to do it for on occasion for ten minutes once a week and often it isn't entertaining. Of course, the show does have its off nights, but that is always the true mark of brilliance, in that when you often fail when you try things. If you aren't failing when you try things sometimes, then you either aren't trying hard enough or your broadcasting on one of the big four networks.
14 03 2004 0 comments
The Dao of Palm
I was talking the other day with some of my new coworkers about the whole Palm craze. It was funny how about two years ago, everything had to have a Palm Pilot and everything had to work on the Palm. If you couldn't order a pizza from a restaurant with your Palm, then, my friend, you shouldn't be going to that particular pizza place... or so the mentality went. And it went so far as to even start having billboards up around San Francisco that had a little spot which would "beam" (send data via infrared light) to your Palm so that you would know when a performance was and what not.
Of course, this is one of those crazes that while not short lived, has been significantly diminished in its fervor. People realized that in a lot of cases, they were doing double entry on to their Palm and their computer when single entry on to a piece of paper was working just fine. Also, there was a problem with software developers, since Microsoft started to make inroads into the Palm market with their Pocket PC system. Naturally, people didn't want to write some little portable application for two platforms, when investment in supporting one platform was already costing them plenty. I think that people also realized that this mobile life that we've been seeing touted as the next big thing or just around the corner isn't really a reality yet. Now, it's true that you can surf the internet from any number of coffee shops these days, but the case where you can check your email from the heart of the Amazon Jungle is probably something that's going to be quite a distance feat.
Don't get me wrong, Palm devices aren't going anywhere and their proliferation has created quite a user base for people to market things at the users. I think Palm did do something very smart in that they split up into two companies: one for the Palm operating system and one for the hardware devices. It seems that licensing the Palm software has been very lucrative these days. In fact, I'm listening to a Palm OS device, which is the Sony Clie. And, I think that in the end that pretty much where it's going to go, since you need the software people to be pushing the hardware people into making advancements and for Palm that just wasn't happening. They still don't have a little gadget like my Clie UX50 which has an MP3 player, camera, Bluetooth, 802.11b wireless built in as well as having all the basic Palm functions. Rock and roll, roll and rock.
11 03 2004 0 comments
A Minor Heating
The heat waves always take us off guard in the Bay Area and probably California in general with the exception of Redding has just about the worst weather in the whole country.
I learned accept heat as a way of life living in the Central Valley. Around the end of March you'd start getting some warm weather that everyone loved and was excited to have, but I knew better. I knew that it would quickly turn into a blistering, lurid heat that would choke your throat and leave you lounging and longing for cooler weather. That was just the start though, because around June it would start to really kick in. We'd get some 90 degree days that were pretty skanky. But yet, you could still function. Other parts of the state (which I'll get to in a minute) would shut down at that temperature. Ah, but that was not the end of it. At some point in August you'd get hit with the Big Wave, the blast of heat that made you wish you had indeed fixed your AC or paid for it in the first place. I remember one summer where the temperature hit 118 degrees. That is insanely hot, especially since it would only "cool off" to 80-85 at night and that was the real catch of it all; cooling off to a hot day during the night.
So, people in the Bay wonder how I can handle the heat better than some, but at the same time, not like it all. Oroville is the reason and summer there was the cause. Now, this is all relative of course, since a 85 degree day in San Francisco really and truly feels like a 105 degree in Oroville. But, at 105 degrees in Oroville, houses were still built, cars still ran, and people didn't die. It seems that whenever the temperature goes above the quarter century mark in the Bay that everything goes on the blink and it's random things like traffic lights not working, peoples' cars not running, buses not working, the underground subway (where it's still decently cool) not working. It's whacked yo.
It makes me wonder if there are fault tolerances built into everything in the Bay since the weather is so pleasant the rest of the year. Whatever the case, it's a little annoying when you find out that the Bart is stalled out somewhere because above ground the weather has reached what, in many parts of the world is considered to be a very pleasant day!
10 03 2004 0 comments
The webs that Russian authors weave
Russian authors are really interesting. Of the ones that I've read or seen their works performed, they love to twist things around on themselves and wind the plot through their fingers in a way that I think a lot of standard issue Americans don't really get. Fine by me. What they write isn't for everyone.
Reason I bring this up is because of a play I saw last weekend called The Master and Margarita. It was put on by ACT and overall, it was very good. It was in a large part free of the stiff quality that plays at the main theatre seem to be forever quagmired in. This is most likely in part because it was at the Zeum and put on the ACT Young Theatre Group. The only problem with it being a young group is the fact that some of the roles were a tad off, since it was obvious that the person playing it was very young. One other bad quality to it is the fact that this group did this annoying thing of having a character that just wandered around the stage for the whole performance and didn't say anything. I've seen this in other ACT plays and I think that they think it's very clever and their "signature" but I find it rather trite and insanely contrived. It'd be great if they stopped doing this altogether.
Overall a great play of a complex subject and if it's still playing when you read this, I'd really recommend to check it out.
09 03 2004 0 comments
Employed at last, employed at last
It's an amazing thing to be working again. Yes, that's right, after my more than a year stint as a "freelancer" I am back into the world of the working. A lot of people may not like working, but I happen to be one of the one's that actually does, since it makes you feel like you're part of something and that you belong to a larger something that actually matters. It's hard to get that when you get up at ten or eleven in the morning and sit around in you boxers until something like one or two in the afternoon. Now, it's not to say that I haven't been productive. In fact, I have a lot to show for my time off, including www.cinefuse.com, a documentary film, a short dramatic film, and a feature-length film. I know some film directors that haven't been able to accomplish that in seven years, let alone 15 months. Of course, I did go to Europe in that time and worked a brief freelance job, just to toss it all into my list of accomplishments.
I guess I'm fortunate in that in the previous week, I just woke up one morning and said, "Geez, I really want and need to get a job." and then in the next week, my dreams of W-4 came true and I started working. I think that it may in part be due to the fact that I wasn't bemoaning not having any money, it was due to the aforementioned fact that I wanted to be part of something again, which just wasn't happening in said boxers. Well, that's not totally true, since I did all those projects, but those were because of me pushing them through and making them happen.
What sacrifices did I have to make to get this job? Well, that's the screwy part, because there is only one and that's the fact that I need to take Bart out to Walnut Creek everyday. But, this isn't a bad thing, since it gives me time to write here, read books I need to read, and just zone out for a half hour or so. Other than that, compared to my last fulltime job, I'm making significantly more, have better benefits, am in what I feel is a more professional environment, and also am a manager who sees over several people. A middle America dream come true in some regards.
