Goodbye Walnut Creek
Walnut Creek, the WC, the DubC, and whatever the hell else you're called, I bid you adieu. No more shall I traverse your two-streeted downtown area picking between Main & Locust and then distilling it down to whatever somewhat all right chain restaurant to go to. I shall not nearly be killed crossing Ygnacio Valley coming from the Bart station on Oakland because you thickheaded turds speed through the red light right there all the time to shave 40 seconds off your trip and nearly kill me in the process. No, I'm sorry a little pathetic "Sorry, didn't see you." wave isn't enough. You've all damn near killed me every day I went out there and it was crap.
Upon returning from future trips to Europe I will not suffer the culture shock anymore that plagued me after returning this spring and suddenly being surrounded by the moronic size of the SUV's that patrol the land of the Far East Bay. You don't need these stupid things. Get a clue. It's your insanely crappy driving that you all have to fear. Oh yes, that reminds me, no more crappy drivers I have to incessantly avoid. I only have to watch out when you bastards come to SF and blast around a corner while talking on your cellphone.
No more turd-colored blocks will dot the landscape. Your earth tones make me ill. I used to like them, but the constant need to destroy anything older than 15 years in your town sickens me. I realize that you're all just transplants there--folks who want to stay in the Bay Area and felt your lives would be incomplete unless you owned a 8,000 square foot home--but for Christ's sake, keep some history. Being able to remember where something was twenty years from now isn't a bad thing and maybe you wouldn't all be so miserable out there if you knew something about the place you live, but you don't and that's sad. Yes, you all are miserable no matter what you think. That's why you keep buying stuff.
One thing I will actually miss are the heavily made up, breast implanted trophy wives that float around out there and their sexy European au pairs that do all the child work. Yeah, you're all hot and why not. You've got plenty of time to work on these things while your husbands are in SF making a living. You could maybe cut down on the annoying phone calls you make all the time that have no purpose and reason to them, but hey, that's the whole make up of your town so why deviate from the norm.
It's all quite sad really. There was a point where WC might have had some permanence, but the influx of breeders to settle there over the last twenty years and this assinine housing boom we've had recently have soiled the town to an incomparably dull glow, reflecting off the latest household storage items at Limn and all the other junk, er... interior design stores.
Good bye for good. I hope to never see you ever again Walnut Creek.
31 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: east bay, ramblings
Offshoring/Out-Sourcing/See Ya!
It is something that is pretty much in danger of affecting all of us these days and it seems that people are prepared to do little about it. There are no boycotts or strong attention paid to what's going on. I think this is in a large degree due to the fact people are of the opinion that it just puts IT jobs in jeopardy, when in reality it is a danger to many more folks than that. But overall, I think the real problem lies in the fact that Americans have gotten so insanely lousy and terrible at doing the simplest of jobs that they are basically asking to have someone in another country, where it seems there are five good people for every one job, have their job.
It's no revelation that people want to do less and less these days. From the fact that if we didn't have people coming in to the USA illegally, those leading us claim that we wouldn't have anyone for the menial jobs (shucks, Ameerikans just don't want 'em) to jobs at the other side of the collar from customer service, support, IT, and whatever else that are getting shipped off to India, Bangledesh, and many other countries, we're quickly going to find ourselves massively laid off as a nation. After all, how long will it take the rest of the world to realize that we're all just middle management here and that truly, we're very uneeded if it gets to that.
I suppose my revulsion for all of this revolves around a recent experience with West Elm (no, no link, they don't deserve it) which is a somewhat high-end furniture maker out there along the lines of DWR (see, a link, I like them.) I tried to order a product from a store about 20 miles from me and have it shipped to my office. Not only did an order get placed for an item that they don't carry anymore, let alone not in stock anymore. Not only did they charge my credit card twice, only refunding one of the amounts. Not only did they not call me to let me know what was going, forcing me to call them and find all of this out. But then, they sent me a receipt as if everything was fine and they still haven't called me back, or refunded my money. Just flat out lousy service for something so insanely simple a... well, anyone in the world could do it and do it better. To quote a friend, "They are x-ed!" It's pretty surprising as well, since they're own by Williams Sonoma who are quite good (yes, they get a link despite their owned company being poo.)
It's not an amazing thing to find out, but I just think that it's rather interesting that now companies have the option of not having to deal with this here and can get what is usually better service for a much cheaper price elsewhere, depsite the fact you can't understand what they're saying. There's bound to be more to come and I'm sure at some point there will come to be a boiling point on this. Either some politician will make it his platform or they'll figure out a way to outsource plumbers, which will be an ugly pipewrench-filled day indeed.
27 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: jobs, technology
Dog Street, San Francisco
There may be other parts of San Francisco that have just as many canine pedestrians as Polk Street, but I have yet to find them.
As I walked the upper part of Polk (the part north of Washington) I realized that the dogs owned this place. From the sheer number of the four-legged fellows to the number of pet shops and Wags (a beauty parlor for dogs) it's obvious why they're there.
It's also little wonder that you see so many dogs on a weekend as there are so many nice outdoor cafes where people can sit with their dogs and enjoy the outdoors. I'm sure most of the dogs are very happy for it after being cooped up all week in an apartment somewhere. This probably explains why I've never seen any dogs with an attitude around there because they're getting some "sun time" as well as the fact most of them are fixed. You can pretty much pet all of them (owner's permission first of course as some people get bent out of shape about this) and not have to worry about a nip or casual leg hump.
North Polk varies a great deal from where you start to get in to South Polk and the Tenderloin where the dogs there would probably sooner bite off your finger than let you pet them. They're a tad bit grungier down in the Loin as well, albeit usually cleaner than a lot of their owners, which says a lot about some of the residents in those there parts.
But, for those who are dog fans and have to go without, it's a nice place to get a fix of canine goodness without actually having to own one of the shed factories. The mini-dachshund I saw today couldn't agree more although he was more concerned about not getting stepped on than giving too much attention to anyone being friendly.
24 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: dogs, san francisco
Information Technology (I.T.) should be All Technology (A.T.)
As I sit in the lulls that buffer the crisis that always loom on the horizon and read Slashdot or one of the millions of other sites that provide information online, I usually find someone coming to me with a problem that they're having with technology. These days these are not usually computer-related problems though, they're with something else because it seems and as time goes on, the term 'I.T.' has taken on broader meanings, seeming to cover anything that gets plugged in around the office.
For instance, the latest one has been cellphones. People (or their kids) will accidentally press some button that makes the phone do something weird and they come to us to figure out what that was. I suppose it's our fault as we usually always solve the problem, but let's face it, going through the grpahic menus on a phone is a whole lot easier than trying to figure out what module dependency is making your kernel not compile properly in Linux.
For the most part, I don't really mind it as it gives a break from the status quo computer crashes that always seem to happen and gives me a chance to play with something new. In the case of upper management, I often get the chance to play with something very new, which can be fun, but is also something of a curse because these are the guys (yeah, it's pretty much always the guys) who buy some new toy that is way overpowered for what they need and after buying it, they discover the horrid evils of being on the bleeding edge. So, it comes to us and we have to figure out why it won't work, which in the case of the Treo line of smartphones is because the damned things were released before fully tested. "Soft reset... and there ya go, your Treo 650 is just great now."
For general questions about general office equipment my favorites have to be the fax and copy machines. People always ask questions about those mystery boxes and I really have only three solutions for them. The first is turn it off and turn it back one which solves around 90% of the problems. The second is to call in a technician because I'm not about to go at those things with a screwdriver. The third is to replace it. The last is very true in the fax machines, since it is just not worth repairing a $100 fax machine when repair rates are $75 an hour.
Looking over all of this, I guess I understand why people keep coming to us, but it's really weird how IT has come to be known as this repository for wisdom of all that is electrical and digital.
22 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: ramblings, technology
Carnival of Ringtones
I've been at the San Francisco office today for my company and there is a sound in the air you don't hear at the Walnut Creek office. This isn't the sound of traffic, sirens, crazy people, cable cars, or any o the other standard sounds you hear in San Francisco. No, this is the massive variety of ringtones that peep from the cell phones.
I'm not sure why they're always going off (people do have desk phones) but they do and you hear all of them. They range from your nice symphony, parlayed down in to a series of beeps to the fancier ones that sound like a whirling something or other. There are even a couple of standard ones here and there, but these have largely been supplanted by the polyphonic or MP3 variants that seem to be sweeping the US like they did elsewhere in the world a few years ago.
One woman who has left the company some time ago had Scooby Doo on her phone, but it was the old-style beep mode of ringing, which to be honest, got pretty grating the fourth or fifth time you heard it in a day. Once again, I don't know why one would hear it so much, she was usually always there at her desk, next to a landline.
But this isn't nearly as nasty as the Crazy Frog ringtone that was the rage in Britain for some time. A co-worker who is from the UK told me about it. I downloaded it, listened to it and cast it aside with vast putrescence. It's horrible. No one should use such a thing, but I guess there you would be, on a bus and the damned thing would go off on everyone's mobile. I cringe to think of what happens when this or the Axel Foley blended-techno-remix hits the shores of the US.
I do have a cellphone in the office, but it barely gets a signal. Something to do with lead paint or other carcinogenic compounds that make up the building I suppose. This is also one of the reasons that I'm surprised so many people get calls here as getting bars is about as likely as finding a parking space in front of the office. As for my ringtone? Mine is sampled from an MP3 and I doubt anyone in the world would recognize it, unless they're as hip as the musically genius people I know who turned me on to Cornelius and his song 'Disco'. I like it, it's weird and frankly, I'm only here one day a week with a partial signal, so people may hear it all of once a day. My evil side is considering downloading Crazy Frog or a polyphonic version of Dancing Queen by Abba, putting a signal booster on my phone and really rocking the crap out of everyone's sensibilities.
21 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: mobiles, ramblings
A Religious Experience
It's always kind of nice (in a relative sense) to get good and warmed up with a nice aerobic workout of some kind for around 20 minutes and then hitting a nice light weight workout. Please let me add the subtext that these days are rather rare for me and just getting to the gym is a massive chore when I have a couch that is as close to emulating a leather-encased cloud as you can get.
Such was the case tonight with my couch. It was feeling great and I didn't want to go anywhere near the gym because I didn't feel nearly as good as the couch did. Regardless, I decided that maybe I'd feel better if I went to the place I pay dearly for and trotted my weary soul down to the gym.
Once there, I went through my regular bit on the elliptical (itlivestokill) and got a nice sweat happening. The heartrate was up, my lethargy was slightly faded and I hopped off that odd contraption to the weight area. To my chagrin it was one of those nights that I always hate--it was packed. I'm fine with a few people around there and even working in with someone on a machine, but tonight was a night that happens sometimes wherein it looks like people are having a religious experience with the workout machines.
They look towards the ceiling, yet with eyes cast downward, apparently trying to find god in the pulldown bar. They grunt profanities and Christ-related epitaphs, only to feel salvation as they pull on the free weights. The best is their dreamy, eerie trance as they do pull-ups.
I'm sorry to say that this isn't my crowd and I had to leave. I much prefer the aethist weight lifters who find no deeper purpose in the machines they use, do their squats/lifts/pulls/crunches etc. and go home, realizing that there is nothing beyond dumbells except a greater healthful good that hurts like hell to attain.
19 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: exercise, ramblings, religion
A Study of the Geek
Something I've found out in recent years has been that there is an overlap of Star Wars & Star Trek fans and being one doesn't make you the other.
While the cases are rare, there are Star Wars fans out there that aren't in to Star Trek. I have friends from childhod like this that seem to see Star Wars as something of an action/adventure film that takes place in space. All of the stuff from the Star Trek brand is too slow and intellectual (in the geek way, not the though provoking way) at times. Although maybe those aren't the right words for it, it is true that Star Trek tends to deal more with social issues and proving some kind of point in the end, whereas Star Wars is all about good beating evil in a way that anyone can enjoy.
Take for instance the first films of the Star Trek & Star Wars series. Star Wars: A New Hope (naturally I'm not talking about that Jar Jar bag of crap called Episode One) is a romping good time. A space cowboy adventure. Star Trek on the other hand is this slow plodding move through outer space in search of VGER. It deals with the complications of man's quest for knowledge and how all-consuming that becomes. Taking the fact you may be on acid while watching Star Trek I out of the equation, what seems more enjoyable; space cowboys or a scantilly clad supermodel with a bald head walking around an uber-80's spaceship talking to Kirk, Stealer of all Scenes? If you're a sci-fi geek, it doesn't matter, but if you enjoy a good film, you're going to choose the first. If you're just a pervert, then probably aren't watching any of this and just have Return of the Jedi looping over the scenes with Leah in her slavegirl outfit.
To me, I don't really care one way or the other. I'm a bit of a sucker for anything that has laser crap firing in it at people or people in bad costumes. Hell, I think The Forbidden Planet is one of the best science fiction films ever made and it's got some serious cheese in it. This is why I'm more in the camp of Star Trek fans. I guess I'm a "trekkie" or "trekker" (whatever the hell the difference is, I can't remember) but I will not ever step foot in a convention. Those things are just too weird for me. I enjoy the series for what it is and like the craft with which a an imaginary world of the future has been created through film and television. But, there I go again with this brainy, thinking thing that sometimes makes me believe a movie is better than it actually is. But that's somewhat how it is, as I think that every Star Trek fan will also enjoy Star Wars just as much.
I suppose in the end it comes down to those who flat out like science fiction as opposed to those who just like a good film. Luckily for us, Star Wars is both of those. Star Trek is always the first, but not always the second, with the even numbered films being much better than the odd numbered films, with the exception of Star Trek X:Nemesis which was pretty much dung on all counts.
18 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: geeks
Pro-Choice Has Better Rhythm
There are few things more interesting than walking by a Planned Parenthood clinic on a Saturday in San Francisco. Why would walking up Eddy Street at Van Ness be so interesting? Well, Saturday is the day of protests at PP apparently. I don't know if yesterday was some kind of significant day other than it being a Saturday, but there they were... the protestors. Ah but wait, before think it's the short-sighted dunderheads with their "Baby Killers" placards all over the place, you need to pause for a moment and think as that would only be half right. Because in addition to these usual zealots were all the pro-choice folks as well. Only in San Francisco would you see this scene and see a situation where the Pro-Choice seriously outnumber the Pro-Life.
I can't really tell if the Pro-Life people were doing any chants or songs, because they certainly were taking themselves too seriously as well the fact that they all seemed to A) white and B) older. The sense of rhythm that I got from their overall mood was one of oppression not any kind of melodic charm. They formed this rather threatening group that seem to make anyone feel shame who came within 20 feet of their somber group. An age-old tactic of dogmatic Christianity as seen in the architecture of the churches, editing of the Bible, and just about anything else.
The Pro-Choice people on the other hand were doing a lot of singing and covering such standard classics as, "Abortion is Healthcare and Healthcare is a Right" as well as my personal favorite, "Hey Bigots, It's Time to Go." I would have to say that even though the racially mixed Pro-Choice group has some rhythmless ethnicities in it (such as white folk) they were definitely able to carry a tune and "get their message on" far better than the Pro-Life group.
Okay, maybe I'm just a bit slanted towards Pro-Choice as I see the Lifers with signs that say, "Abortion Kills Chidren". It's fine if that's your opinion (because there is after all a good deal of medical knowledge that shows a fetus in the first and second trimester of development wouldn't have a chance of surviving with the mother, thus making it not a life other than a parasitic one) but stick to your damned opinions. Of these people who hold up signs like this, I would bet damn good, large amounts of money that they all voted for Bush because he is very Pro-Life. This ironic is something just isn't funny anymore because Bush kills children. He does it in Iraq on a daily basis. He also kills elsewhere, like in Afghanistan, as well as right here in the US of A with his pro-death penalty stance. If you're Pro-Life, then be Pro-Life. You can't pick and choose what is and isn't life. These people really need to change their name to Anti-Abortion and be done with it, but naturally, anything with Anti in the title just isn't as catchy as having "life" there makes them feel like they're doing something good, as well as the fact many of them are pro-war and death penalty. Twisted.
I suppose we'll all need to deal with these people more as undoubtedly with the new appointments Bush is going to be making this year to the Supreme Court, he will be trying to get some hardcore right wing judges in there, which is a premise I base on any appointment Bush has done in the past (Ashcroft?!! He lost to a dead man!) I just hope it will be the final push to everyone out there who sits around not doing anything about the state of our rights in the US to get up and take action against a very vocal minority that acts like it's the way that the whole USA feels, which that is far from the truth.
17 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: abortion, san francisco
Suspicious Looking Packages Largely Commonplace
Following ramped-up security in London following the recent bomb attacks over there, the US (home of the ever-present, always-possible terrorist attack) transit agencies have stepped up their security as well. Apparently in a new break from the overall color coding scheme, individual areas can have their color upgraded, such as I've seen lately in Bart with its level "orange". I'm a little afraid what will happen when there is a hot fuscia alert for the airports and a cool mint green alert issued for the taxis. The results are too much to contemplate and a true crime against humanity.
Anyways, back to the orange that we've got these days. The net result has been a rather impressive sweeping of the Bart trains looking for suspicious packages (aka a bomb in a box) that hasn't really materialized.
Like most plans in the post-9/11 days, this latest effort is a good effort but vastly misdirected. While there was the off chance that someone would put a bomb on Bart, what are the chances really? First of all, anyone who would do this would know that there was tighter security and it would be a pretty stupid thing to try. And why is it that one event in one part of the world has to trigger reactions everywhere else. After the twin towers fell, we didn't see Britain or France go nuts and raise their levels to "orange" did we. Why? Well, unfortunately they've gotten rather jaded to the whole terrorist thing since they've been dealing with it for awhile and it seems they've kind of accepted it as a way of life. After all, it is true that terrorist activity is a pretty extreme anomaly designed just to garner attention and if you don't give it that attention, then you rob of it of all its strength, something akin to that Simpsons Halloween episode where if you stopped looking at the rampaging billboards, they died out.
Once again, the transit anti-terror effort was great. It was good to see people patroling the cars up and down before we headed through the Transbay Tube, but I've noticed the effort dying down lately as the events that happened start to simmer. I'm sure that the people doing the checking had delusions of grandeur as they walked the trains, thinking they'd be the one to karate chop the would-be terrorist and foil their nefarious plot (face it, we've all thought it, okay fine, maybe just I admit it then!) Now as they walk down and are confronted with having to pick up yet another pile of garbage somebody left on the train which is seriously unbomb-like, they completely ignore this box I was carrying. Sure, I don't look like the typical terrorist (whatever the hell that looks like these days, remember Timothy McVeigh was a white boy) but I got this motherboard that came in a white cardboard box with a handle on the top. It really looked like something you'd see in a movie as being a bomb, but is not what they look like at all in real life as shown by the dastardly shoebox nail bomber in the UK. As the car walkers passed by me, they didn't bat an eye at it. No questions, no weirdness.
I'm sure all of this will pass again and with it, we'll step further up or down another step (depending on how you look at it) in to our 21st century existence with terrorists.
13 07 2005 0 comments
Tags: hysteria, terrorism, us america
I See Bluetooth People
I don't know why the thought struck me over the weekend. Maybe because I wasn't doing much except looking around the rumor sites for Apple crap or maybe it was because I was a little delirious from this funky eye thing that's going on. At any rate, I think I know the next innovation that's coming our way on the iPods--Bluetooth.
For those who don't know, Bluetooth is a limited-range wireless transmission standard that allows data to be sent through the air. You may have heard about WiFi or wireless internet on a cellphone, but this is quite a different system that runs on a different standard. It has the major plus of using very little power, but at the same time has the minus of only being able to trasnmit 30 feet or so.
With that in mind, I realized how well this would fit in to an iPod. Afterall, they're kind of reaching the end of innovation on those things, since color screens and larger storage are about the only new items they can come up with. There is an iPod phone coming out soon and there will undoubtedly be a video iPod somewhere down the road, but all that stuff is very, very expensive and not some minor little thing that people would flock and feel as if they needed to have the next model.
The benefits of Bluetooth on an iPod are pretty numerous. For one, there is the possbility that people could tie in the earphones they already own for their cellphones in to it and you could have wireless headsets. Another thought is that people could beam their music to their stereo and we would then have an updated AirTunes basestation. But most important of all is that there are many cars being made these days with built-in Bluetooth systems for cellphones. I'm sure these could be easily changed allow the iPod to beam to them as well and things like the iTrip would go out the window. The one thing that really wouldn't work too well is syncing. Yes, you could probably do it via Bluetooth, but it would be slooow.
I of course have no official knowledge of anything like this ever happening, but based upon all the gadgets out there that make a lot of these things possible, how widespread Bluetooth is becoming, and the fact it used little power, it seems like a rather ideal fit for the next model off iPod, unless of course, they're just satisfied with constantly increasing the space to storage limits that are ridiculously absurd.
