wildyams

All I want for my birthday is a fair voting process in this country.

Last night when I got home I spent a couple hours moving items around my apartment in an effort to hook up the bigscreen TV that Jon is loaning me till he returns next summer (or whenever). I knew it was going to be a pretty major undertaking, but man, what a nightmare. I had to partially dismantle a shelving system and then re-assemble it (which probably took 2 hours alone), I had to go through a huge spaghetti-like mess of wires and unplug everything and go about re-connecting it all; and I had to move both a 27" and a 32" TV from one room to the next. I also had to move some furniture around to make room for all that moving, but it was definitely worth it, even though I've still got a lot of crap to move around yet. Just turning on the new TV and popping in a DVD to check it out was really nice. This weekend the cable people are coming out to install HDTV and a DVR in my living room, and I can't wait to see that kind of clarity, but it was nice to be able to have such a large, clear picture to look at at home. The TV is definitely overkill, with something like 9 video inputs (I could plug my G5 into it using the DVI input if I wanted to, which was weird to see on a TV), and I am using the component inputs from my DVD player connected with THX-approved Monster Cables (which are also overkill, but which Jon is also letting me use while he's out of town). Sorry to geek out over it all, but it's a pretty sweet setup that Jon has let me use for the next couple months, and I'm excited about it :grin Also, I now moved my 32" TV into my bedroom and got the Tivo all hooked up to that, and tonight if I get a chance I'm gonna try to figure out some better connections for that. Anyway, I gotta get to work, but suffice it to say that I'm very happy to have the biggest part of my whole re-arrangement at my apartment over with :grin

I read this article about how the US government is getting ready to send robots to war, and had a couple unpleasant thoughts about it. First off, check out what the article says:

...the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns. As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq...

Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.

For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away. The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals instead.

Ok, so we've got mechanized soldiers armed with machine guns that are controlled by radio signals. My first worry is that if the goverment improves these things to the point of being more effective than real soldiers (and you'd have to think that's inevitable), then if the government ever wanted to basically take control of society here in America, they would no longer have to worry about the military not being up to the task of wasting American civilians. My second concern is that someone could hack these things and take control of them. Technology is always going to have weaknesses that can be exploited by people who know more than the people who created it, and in this case, who wants to risk some mean-spirited hacker taking control of machines with machine guns? Hell, what if "the enemy" was to take control and turn these robotic soldiers against US soldiers in combat? Since there is no "Terminator-like" AI to worry about, I'm not concerned the machines will decide to turn on people or anything like that, but who's to say some nut out there can't get them to turn on us? Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?

At this moment right now my apartment is cleaner than it has been in years. Now this is not to say that it is clean, but it is most definitely a hell of a lot cleaner than it has been for probably at least 3 or 4 years. My living room and kitchen are clean enough to the point that they just need to be vacuumed and dusted and that's it. All my trash and junk that was in there is now gone (and I don't mean "hidden away" I mean gone, down the trash chute). Odds are probably good that I threw out some good stuff along with all the trash and worthless junk, but when it came down to it I really didn't want to sort through it all, so if I happened to notice something of value while I was gathering everything for disposal, then I saved it, but otherwise it went down the chute like Verdel. My bedroom and bathroom are totally untouched, which is to say that both are still complete disasters; but it is quite possible that they will be next. I essentially have spent between 10 and 15 hours this week straightening up my apartment to make room for all of Jon's stuff, but it is definitely worth it. If I do indeed clean my bedroom and bathroom, then I will seriously consider bringing someone in to clean my whole place. The only reason I haven't done that up to this point is because cleaning my place (as in dusting and vacuuming) would have been pointless because of all the stuff everywhere. I can't stress enough how nice and relaxing it was to sit there in my living room last night and just watch some TV once I had it all straightened up. It's just much more peaceful when there's not all that clutter around. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that :grin

I thought this was a pretty cool/extremely nerdy shirt for sale on ThinkGeek:

Han Shot First shirt

It's not every day you see the words "water polo" and "riot" in the same sentence, so I felt that since I used to play water polo (arguably the most fun sport I've ever participated in) I ought to make a mention of this riot that broke out at a water polo game in Greece. Oddly enough, it sounds similiar to the brawl that took place at the Pistons-Pacers game a couple weeks ago.

The trouble started when players began fighting in the pool with the score at 3-3 and just 91 seconds remaining. Substitutes joined in by leaping into the pool and supporters in the stands also began fighting.

The Panionios players in the pool were then subjected to a hailstorm of advertising hoardings, chairs, first aid equipment and clothing thrown from the stands.

Wait, clothing was thrown?! I am trying to picture that. Some guy is in the stands and thinks "I'm gonna throw my jacket into the pool at these guys!" I dunno, maybe it's a cultural difference or something.

Just a quick recap on a few things from the weekend. On Friday night after work, a couple of my co-workers and myself trekked north to Santa Clarita to go to Farrell's. If you're unfamiliar with Farrell's, I mentioned it a while ago, and you can go read about it if you want. We got up there and enjoyed the food (the waffle fries are reccomended), and the fantastic desserts, and observed all the birthday celebrations that went on (including my own, since they told them it was my birthday just to see the spectacle Farrell's makes :lol). After eating, we watched A-Lowe kick some serious Ms. Pacman ass, then we went home.

Saturday the cable guys came by to install my high definition box with DVR, and naturally they came at about 5 minutes before they were to be considered "late" (you know how they say "sometime between 1 and 8" and then show up at 7:56). Unfortunately they only brought a box that does HD, but not DVR, so I had to make another appointment for this coming Saturday so they can bring the right box. In the meantime, I've got high definition though, and it's pretty sweet. I can definitely tell a difference in the picture quality (the cable box has component cable hookups, as well as a DVI out and for audio it has optical out), and am quite pleased.

I have two complaints, however. First, even though it has optical audio out (which I promply hooked up to my receiver), the audio that comes from the cable seems to only be Pro-Logic, even if the onscreen menu says that the program is supposed to be Dolby Digital. My receiver has no problems decoding Dolby Digital and DTS from my DVD player, and it is definitely getting an audio signal from the cable box (because I can hear it fine), but it just decodes it as Pro-Logic, so I can only assume that's all the cable box is capable of. Whatever, it's a minor thing. My other complaint is that at current there still aren't very many high definition channels out there. I get all the pay ones, and that amounts to around 5-10 of them for movies, and then there's maybe another 5-10 for stuff like ESPN and the Discovery channel.

Anyway, other than movies, most of the stuff they had playing on the HD channels this weekend were college football games I don't care about (but they did look amazingly clear). I'm looking forward to seeing some basketball games in HD though. In any event, it's nice to not have to switch my TV setting from standard to wide anymore, now that there are widescreen channels. Actually the best thing about it might be the new cable remote, which seems to be the best univeral remote I've had, because it actually will control the TV, cable and my receiver by itself, and does all the functions on all three items that I want. It won't control my DVD player, but it's still nice to only have two remotes now for my whole system (I believe I had 5 before). All in all I'm quite pleased with everything, and I can't wait to get the DVR on Saturday :grin

Did anyone see the movie Love Actually? It came out about a year ago and I never got around to seeing it at the time, but I remember hearing some good things about it, and it seems to be well received on IMDB. Anyway, I Tivo'd it sometime in the last week and finally got around to watching it on Saturday and I gotta say it was pure crap. It was so bad I turned it off after an hour. I wanted to turn it off after a half hour, but I figured that maybe I was just being impatient and not giving it enough of a chance, and that I should wait an hour. After all, I waited an hour with The Hours before finally succumbing to boredom and irritation, so I figured I'd give this one the same chance.

I finally threw in the towel with this one after the following scene with Hugh Grant's character. Hugh Grant was portraying the Prime Minister of England, which seems like a weird casting choice as it is, but he was playing it like he plays just about everything else: as an affable, somewhat goofy, bumbling, hopeless romantic, which is not exactly the way I would describe any leaders of any countries, least of all one as powerful as the UK. In any event, he's single in this movie, and is all twisted up because he has a crush on his secretary (who also has a crush on him, naturally). Anyway, the President of the US (played by Billy Bob Thornton) has just dropped in for a visit, and while he and Hugh are hanging out in some lounge-type room at whatever the British equivalent of the White House is, Hugh gets up to go grab a drink of some kind and tells the President he'll be right back. After being gone maybe 15 second, he returns to find Billy Bob putting the moves on Hugh's secretary. They exchange disapproving looks, and then it cuts to a press conference the next day. The press asks Billy Bob if things are going well between the two countries, and Billy Bob says yes; then when they ask Hugh, he says "actually, no." At this point triumphant music comes up as Hugh and Billy Bob share another series of disapproving looks, and then it cuts to Hugh watching TV later that night, which is describing him as "our ass-kicking Prime Minister"; which then prompts Hugh to begin dancing around lip-syncing to the Pointer Sisters.

I couldn't reach for my remote fast enough.

I hate romance movies that require you to suspend as much or more belief than you do while watching a Van Damme/Schwarzennegger/Segal action-type flick. There have to be other romantic predicaments out there that don't involve the world leaders, who are great people and conveniently single. Also, I hate movies that try to suggest that the most powerful people in the world like to dance around in their underwear or sing along loudly to the songs in the radio just like the rest of us. The guy is the Prime Minister and he's able to walk around his house dancing and singing, go down the stairs and across a number of rooms and no security guards are anywhere to be seen? Anyway, the schmaltz was being laid on so thick I was afraid I would be buried by it and would be unable to ever get out from under it, so instead switched to watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it was glorious :grin

On Sunday morning (it was actually noon or so, but it was "morning" to me) I awoke to a loud ringing. Since I hadn't set an alarm, it took me a second to realize it was coming from outside my apartment, and this confused me. As I struggled to swim up out of the sleep-induced haze and into some kind of coherent consciousness, I realized it was a fire alarm going off in the hallway. Naturally this is not exactly how I wanted to wake up. Oddly enough, my first reaction was of annoyance, which I think is a residual effect of having been through so many fire drills in my life but no actual fires.

A fire alarm basically has the odd association for me of being an instance where a loud alarm goes off and it interrupts whatever you're doing so you can go evacuate whatever building you're in before being told "good job" and then going back to whatever it was you were doing. In real life when you hear a fire alarm, this is most assuredly NOT the reaction you should have to an alarm, and it took me a second to realize that instead I should be thinking "oh shit, is the building on fire?"

I began to be worried that maybe the hallway would be on fire and I'd have to jump from my second-story balcony to the lawn below; or that my whole apartment would go up in flames or something. I threw on some shorts and flip-flops and went to the window to see what was going on outside, because I could hear the sounds of fire engines approaching. Outside I noticed that it was raining rather heavily, so I thought that since I didn't smell any smoke, and after checking the hallway I didn't see any smoke or fire, that I should put on some warmer clothes in case I had to stand outside for a while. So I put on some sweats and shoes and grabbed a jacket and made for the exit. As I was going down the stairs, I passed a couple firemen in full gear carrying their axes, and I figured I should just get the hell out of the building; but then I saw something that made me realize it was all ok: the firemen were being followed up the stairs by a pizza man carrying a pizza. Seeing this, I asked one of the firemen if I needed to evacuate the building, and he told me that I didn't because they had it under control. It turns out (according to a letter left under my door from the management yesterday) that it was just a faulty heater upstairs, and that it was all taken care of. Anyway, that was the way my Sunday began.

I'm now all wired up the way I want to be here at home, except maybe for one last adjustment. I moved my old DVD player into my bedroom and hooked up an S-Video splitter so that the video signal from that DVD player now goes to the TV in my bedroom as well as my G5, and I used RCA cables to split the audio signal to go to both of those devices as well. Now I can watch TV (or Tivo) and DVDs on both my TV and my G5, and using my G5 I can now capture both video and audio from DVDs and from my Tivo. In addition, I now get 5.1 audio from my high definition cable box. Apparently what happened was that they needed to upgrade my service (it's the reason they gave me for why they forgot to bring a DVR box instead of just a HD one). I noticed my onscreen channel menu changed, and so did my audio output. So all I need now is the DVR box, which I'll get Saturday. The only other change I might make is to get a DVI cable to connect my video from the cable box to the TV. After all, a digital signal going through a digital cable to a digital input would be superior video quality than a digital signal being converted to an analog signal to go through analog cables only to be re-converted to digital signal so it can go into a digital input. Anyway, I'm probably gonna ask the cable company if they have one of those cables. After all, they provided me with component video cables last weekend :grin

I almost forgot. Yesterday I got a mention on BoingBoing, and I wanted to give credit where credit is due; so thanks to Paola for pointing out that Bible Man was actually played by someone of some notoriety (I can't remember who she thought he was, though). Without Pao-Pao, I never would have realized that once upon a time Bible Man was also known as Buddy Lembeck.

Check out this fantasic article in Wired about the ways to solve traffic congestion, make road travel safer for cars and pedestrians, and how to envigorate over-crowded areas. The solution? Less road signs and markings:

Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn't done his job. "The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there's a problem with a road, they always try to add something," Monderman says. "To my mind, it's much better to remove things."

The following quote from Ian Lockwood, who is a transportation and design consultant, rang particularly true with me, considering I absolutely hate living in Hollywood, and pretty much the sole reason for that is because of the traffic:

"The cities that continue on their conventional path with traffic and land use will harm themselves, because people with a choice will leave. They'll go to places where the quality of life is better, where there's more human exchange, where the city isn't just designed for cars. The economy is going to follow the creative class, and they want to live in areas that have a sense of place. That's why these new ideas have to catch on. The folly of traditional traffic engineering is all around us."

I came across this website today and thought it was too funny to not link to. It points out some poorly designed piece of urban environment every month with a humorous description of why what we're looking at is so wrong.

The message, apparently: art and design are nothing but fun fun fun. Nothing to get serious about. A playful spirit of induced hazard will keep students wondering when the checkered box might wobble free of its cute swizzle-stick legs and come crashing down on their heads.

I think that Drew may be right about Kate Bosworth. Maybe she's not that bright after all (sorry to disappoint those of you out there who saw Blue Crush and assumed she was a genius). What makes me doubt Ms. Bosworth's mental faculties? Well, she was on The Daily Show last night and when she asked Jon Stewart where he was from, he said "the mean streets of Calcutta" and she clearly thought he was serious. He became aware that she thought he was serious, so to try to help her out he then said that he was raised by lemurs. However, when he noticed that she thought he was also being serious about that, he then threw in "in a sewage ditch" to which she finally replied "I don't believe that." It's quite a humorous exchange, see for yourself:

Click to Download (5.2 megs)

I will give her this: it must take a lot of courage to go on TV like that when you know there's probably a good chance you're going to end up looking silly. Either that or she's just a moron like I was :lol

I haven't had any spam comments posted to my blog since I upgraded to Movable Type 3.121, but that doesn't mean that spam comments haven't been submitted here. Since I upgraded a few months ago, I've had just over 9,500 spam comments submitted here, and they've all either been blocked or submitted for my approval before being posted (none of which were approved, of course). While MT v. 3x makes it much easier to go through the hundreds of spam comments and eliminate them (or rather, not approve them to be posted), it is still an almost daily pain in the ass to have to check to see if I got spammed, and then to disapprove all the comments. So even though they never make it to my blog, it's still a little extra maintenance which in a perfect world would not be needed. So I am trying something new to see if this works.

Since virtually every spam comment I've ever seen has been posted to old entries that are no longer on my main page, I am assuming that the automated program these spammers use simply looks for the individual entry pages and fills in the form at the bottom to post comments. What I did is make it so that all my individual entries now have the same javascript function to open a new window if you want to post comments, just like you see on the main page. I am hoping this one additional step will stave off a lot of the automated spam, making it that much less work for me to have to go through and disapprove comments. Anyway, here's hoping it works :grin

I had a rather interesting Saturday. I got up at around 11 or so when the cable guy showed up to switch out my HD box for a box that does HD and DVR. I am really happy about having this new setup, as I can now use my Tivo a little differently. I am going to use my HDTV DVR to record all Laker games and any movies I have not seen that are going to be on HD Cable, and I am going to use my Tivo to record everything else that I have any interest in seeing. All I do is I take about an hour once a week (usually on Sundays) and just flip through the upcoming schedule and select all the stuff I want to see, and then whenever I have time I watch what I've recorded. It's very convenient :grin

After the cable guy left, I ran out for a bit and my car began to show that it was overheating on the temperature gauge. Naturally I was upset, so I pulled my car over to check it out; but as I slowed down I noticed that the needle dropped down to a normal setting, and it only went up when I hit the gas. This different than what I've seen in other cars when they've overheated, so I wondered if that meant the thermostat was broken or something. When I pulled over there wasn't any coolant coming out of my car and I didn't smell anything, so I figured that was a good sign, and assumed I was probably ok to drive to the nearest mechanic and have them check it out, so I hopped in and drove off to look for one. The first place I came to, the guy said he had just looked at his last customer so I was out of luck (he must have been getting ready to go to lunch or else he closed real early on the weekends or something), so I went on to the next place I found. At the next place, however, nobody there spoke English very well at all, so we both had a real hard time understanding each other. From what I could determine, the guy said my temperature sensor was bad, so he unplugged it and said I should go get a new one, but it was ok to drive for the time being. Because of the language barrier I wasn't too confident that this was ok, but I figured I could go to the nearest AutoZone and ask them about the part. However, as I was driving to the nearest place, my "Check Engine" light came on. I assumed this was because I now had something unplugged in my engine, but it still made me worried. At the AutoZone they said they didn't have the part, so I left and decided to look for another mechanic to get a second opinion about whether this was ok.

The next guy I found did speak English, and was very helpful. He had me run a whole series of checks on my car and narrowed it down to a couple things that could be wrong. He said that I may just be low on coolant, and if so, I needed to refill that, otherwise I could possibly cause my head gasket to explode, which would be extremely expensive to fix. Unfortunately, I couldn't check to see if I was low on coolant till my car cooled down (which took about 3 hours, probably because it was the hottest part of the day, and it was close to 90 on Saturday). He did find out that my fan was not turning on when the thermostat was climbing above where it should, so I may have a defective fan switch, but he said in the meantime I could bypass that by always running my air conditioner, which would turn that fan on anyway. He said if my coolant was at the right level, then it was probably either the fan switch or a defective temperature sensor, or my thermostat was bad. Well after waiting around for the couple hours till my car cooled down (apparently if you open your radiator while it's hot, it will spray you with coolant), I saw that my coolant level was at the top, so according to the mechanic it must be one of the above-mentioned parts. He said I could still drive the car in the meantime with that minor malfunction, but that I should get the parts directly from the manufacturer, and that I should at the very least get this fixed before summertime when it will get hot again. Having driven my car around for the last two days with the A/C on, I haven't had any more problems other than minor fluctuations on my temperature gauge, so I feel like I have (hopefully) dodged a bullet on this one.

After reading this article, combined with my unsuccessful effort to stem the tide of all spam comments here at my blog (based on the fact that the refused blacklisted spam comments continue to pour in, despite my change this morning, I'm taking a "drastic" step: I am removing all commenting capabilities from Individual Entry-based pages. What this means is that once a post has moved off of the main page of my blog, you won't be able to comment on it again. This should not impact my blog much, since it's about 99.9% spammers that comment on entries after they've moved off the main page of my blog, and maybe .1% real commenters who do. I am doing this to save myself the trouble of having to moderate comments on old entries (which are almost always spam), and mainly to save Dave's server from any unwanted stress. Sorry to have to take these drastic steps, but in reality it's not fair to put that kind of strain on a server which I pay $5 a month for. Commenting on the main page will still be the same as it's always been, so this won't impact most of you who do comment here, so you don't have to worry about that :grin Also, I doubled the number of entries displayed on the main page, so people will have approximately twice as long to comment on them as you would have otherwise.

UPDATE: Dave tells me this probably won't stop the spam either, but he's looking into doing something else which should help greatly. Also, when I get home I'm looking into using this to mass close all comments on old entries. What a mess. Maybe I'll just migrate to something else like Jason did.

UPDATE #2: After talking some more with Dave, he thinks that my current solution will probably take and will in fact eliminate the spam here on my blog, and I believe it, because I haven't had even one spam attempt on my blog since I made that change. So for anyone out there with an MT blog, if you want to really get rid of spam comments, this is a decent solution (although you also eliminate the possibility of people commenting directly on old entries, which the newest MT Blacklist was doing anyway).

I thought I'd quickly break down what I've noticed about the two different PVRs that I have: the Comcast Cable DVR and my Tivo. Both have pros and cons.

Tivo
Pros: It has a bigger hard drive, you can skip forward in various increments (not just fast forward at varying speeds), and it is much more programmable (the season pass manager, and the ability to look for keywords are fantastic).

Cons: There are only two cons I can think of. First, it doesn't record high definition (at least, as far as I know). This doesn't matter, because I don't have it hooked up to a high definition TV or signal, so it's moot. The second problem is kind of a big one: you can't watch something and record something else at the same time. Now I know, some would say if you split the cable signal before it gets to the box, then you could watch local cable while recording whatever you wanted, but I don't really watch much except for the pay stations anyway, so that doesn't really help me out.

Comcast's DVR
Pros: It records in HD, and you can record one thing while watching something else.

Cons: The HD isn't that big, holding (according to the cable company) 60 hours of regular TV or 40 hours of HDTV. And it has basically no programmability, except for just skipping ahead with the onscreen guide, and if you see something you want to record, you hit 'record'.

So there you go. What a totally stupid entry this was :nono

Happy Birthday you two. Hope you both have a great day :grin

I have a couple of moral questions about infidelity that I'm curious to hear others' opinions on.

#1 - If you have a significant other and someone who is friends with both of you finds out that your significant other is cheating on you, would you want them to tell you?

#2 - If you are good friends with a couple and you know that one of the people is cheating on the other one, what would you do?

#3 - If one of your good friends is deliberately lying to someone you don't know too well, and is leading them on by promising things or through actions making promises which you can see are going to end up breaking that other person's heart, what would you do?

#4 - If one of your good friends is seeing someone and you find out that the person they are seeing is cheating on them, would you tell them?

Ding dong the spam is dead. I now have FINALLY eliminated any chance of spam on my blog for entries that are more than 2 weeks old. I did this by using this great plugin to close all my old comments, so now even if some robot could get in directly to the single comment submission and could submit something, it would patently refuse it because the comments are closed. While the better solution would have been to eliminate the part of the code that allows for comments to always be submitted if you know the deep link (thus helping ease the load on the server even more by giving the robots nothing to even submit), at least this will prevent the blacklist from running a check against some 3,000+ banned words or phrases every time something is submitted. I de-spammed and locked down Jon's blog as well, since it is another MT blog on the same server I'm using. As soon as JB moves his blog to this server, I can do the same for him (switch your DNS already, John! :lol), but on that old server the plugin doesn't work, so I can't shut off the spam. After doing all that, Dave set up my blog so I can make entries that will post automatically at a later date, so I am using this entry to test that. I hope it works (thanks in advance, Dave :grin).

The spam is officially dead. I don't even have to use the Blacklist anymore. I have it, but I have it turned off, and in the last week I've had exactly zero spam comment attempts. I won't get the random legit old comment, but then again someone can email their comment to me if they want to. Anyway, it's good to be spam free. I hope I can stay this way :grin

This weekend saw another interesting chapter in "fun with my car". It all began Thursday, when I got in my car to go to work in the morning and noticed that when I started my car up it was a little reluctant. It did start on the first attempt, however, so I forgot about it until I got in the car to go home afterwards and it was a little hesitant again. Even though I was meeting up with everyone at Benihana for a late birthday celebration, I figured I didn't want to risk a dead battery, so I stopped off at Pep Boys to get a new one. While I was there I had them check the battery and their gizmo said that sure enough it wasn't going to hold a charge, so I got a new battery.

The battery worked great that night and Friday, but on Saturday I noticed on the way to eat that my car windows seemed to be rolling down a little slower than usual. I didn't think much of this till I came out from eating to find my car wouldn't start. Luckily I have AAA, so I called them and waited for the guy to show up. When I explained what happened, he checked my headlights and said it was almost surely the alternator, and that driving anywhere, even with it freshly jumped, would still cause it to die, and I needed a new alternator. He offered to tow my car to where he worked (here in Hollywood), and said they could fix the alternator on Monday. Well, this left me with no car till today, so I asked about rental cars. Unfortunately for me, on the weekends rental car companies pretty much shut down (important piece of info for anyone thinking of renting a car on a weekend in the future). It seems that all rental car companies on Saturdays close by noon or 1 pm, or if you're really lucky, maybe 3 pm; and arent' open at all on Sundays.

All of them, that is, except for the ones at the airports.

Since the metro rail runs to LAX (and not Burbank), I hopped on the red line, took that to the blue line, took that to the green line, and then took the green line tram to LAX to rent me a car. I went with Hertz and got myself a Chevy Aveo. I'd never even heard of an Aveo before, but it was a nice little car (although Steve-o would be going nuts driving around in one, knowing there's no way to look cool while behind the wheel of one :lol), and as a nice bonus the CD player played MP3 CDs. So I had the Aveo for Saturday and Sunday and then drove it to work today, but I had a problem today.

The car was costing something like $45 a day (with insurance and what-have-you), and if I didn't want to pay for more than 2 days I had to return it today by 5 pm. My car was at the shop and was going to be finished today, but they closed at 6 pm. My original plan had been to drop the car off at the Hertz by work (maybe 3 blocks away) and hitch a ride home with Matt or someone else who lives in Hollywood; but since I had to get my car before 6 or wait till tomorrow morning, that wasn't gonna work. Eventually I decided that the best thing to do was to leave work early, go drop my car at the Hollywood Hertz location (at Hollywood & Highland) and take a cab to get my car (at Cahuenga & Santa Monica), so that's what I did.

So on the downside, the whole affair cost me a couple hundred bucks, but on the plus side, I did get to take my first cab ride ever here in LA :grin

Just when I thought it was safe to go back in my car...

Monday after I picked up my car from the shop and drove it home, I popped the trunk to put something in it when I parked in my garage, and when I turned the car off and got out I noticed my brake lights were still on. Now, in addition to replacing my alternator, they also replaced my brake switch because my brake lights had not been coming on (and it wasn't the fuse, cause I checked that), so it turned out it was my brake switch that was bad. So seeing my brake lights on when I wasn't in the car was a little worrisome, but when I closed my trunk they went off, so I figured maybe the brake switch was just new and needed to be loosened or something, and I didn't really think about it again.

I drove to work the next day and everything was fine, but when I went out to my car at lunch my battery was totally dead. So dead I couldn't even use my power door locks. At first I figured it was either my alternator still was broken, or the fact that the new battery I bought on Thursday had been killed by my bad alternator and I was gonna need a new one. But then I remembered how my brake lights had stuck the night before and I began to wonder if my brake lights hadn't stayed on all day and run down my battery.

After work Matt was nice enough to give my car a jump and sure enough, my brake lights were now stuck on all the time. Closing the trunk didn't turn them off, neither did repeatedly pumping on the brakes. I decided to drive home and tinker with it there, and on the way found that if I put my foot under my brake pedal and pulled on it the brake lights would turn off, so clearly there's just some issue with the new brake switch in my car. When I got home I tinkered with it, and couldn't get it to get so the brake lights would stay off, so I just said the hell with it and pulled the brake light fuse on my car.

So now my brake lights are still out, but at least I don't have to worry about my car dying on me every time I park it somewhere (and sure enough it started right up this morning). As soon as I get a chance (Friday, hopefully) I'll take my car back and see if they can adjust the new brake switch so it won't do what it's doing. In the meantime I'll just be careful about watching who is behind me (something I got used to driving around with my brake switch out anyway), and if a cop pulls me over, I'll explain what happened and can just put the fuse back in if they want me to.

My car is still giving me trouble. On Thursday on my way home from work I stopped at 7-11 to get some soda and when I turned my car back on it stalled as soon as I put it in reverse. It did this a couple times, but I found if I turned my lights off then it was ok. This was not a good sign, of course, but I quickly drove it home and parked it and hoped it would last me through the weekend so I could take it to the dealership on Monday for a diagnostic check. So far it's been ok, and tomorrow morning I'm gonna run it in there to see what they can tell me.

As some have noted (since I haven't even looked at my blog for a couple days) some comment spam returned, but I've removed it since. It was one comment spammer who hit some of my most recent entries with the same thing, but they're now gone. That's the only comment spam attempt I've had this week, which anyone with a blog will tell you is pretty good.

I've had a request from Koga to talk about the Kobe-Shaq matchup yesterday, but I doubt people really want to hear my take on the basketball side of it, and are more interested in my opinion on the soap-opera side of it, but I'll give both. Briefly, my opinion on the basketball side of it was that the Lakers took too many three-point shots, Kobe shot it too much in general, and the Lakers need to have Lamar Odom running the point most of the time, because they are having Kobe do way too much and it is wearing him out late in ballgames.

As far as the soap-opera side of it, I'm pretty burned out on that whole business. I have thought for a couple years now that both Shaq and Kobe have egos that are far too large, and I have been torn between liking them for what they did to help the team win, versus what they would say and do off the court to hurt the team in many other ways. Shaq is no longer with the Lakers, so I don't like him at all, because I root for the Lakers, not the players. I appreciate what he did as a Laker, so I don't hate the guy, but he plays for another team, and I've always only rooted for the guys who are on the Lakers. Kobe is on the Lakers, so I root for him and hope he improves both on and off the court. I am sick of all the drama that surrounds him, but since I don't know the guy, I don't know how much of that is his doing and how much of it is the media's doing. Either way, I'm tired of it. I just want to watch the games and that's it. I don't want to worry about what some player's image may be, and I don't want to worry about whether the players are getting enough respect or whatever. I don't care if they get along with each other, as long as they play well together. To be honest, the whole thing is slowly but surely turning me off to the sport, and to sports in general. If I had wanted to watch a soap-opera, I would have gone and watched a soap-opera. :nono

Anyway, yesterday and the day before were a Merry Xmas with my family. I got some good gifts, and hopefully got some others some good gifts. A good time was had by all, and we were all very, uh, merry :grin

I can't remember ever seeing this much rain before. It is a serious torrential downpour outside right now, and there was a thunder crash a few minutes ago that was arguably the loudest thing I've ever heard. It was so loud, I really thought that there had been a terrorist attack and a bomb had been detonated right in Hollywood. After that thunderclap, ever car alarm in the neighborhood was going off. It's really crazy. Also, that was pretty much the only thunder I've heard. There has been a little here and there for the last couple hours I guess, but I hadn't heard any thunder for probably an hour when that last one hit, and I haven't heard any thunder since. Even though I'm inside with the shades drawn and my lights are on, I saw the flash before the thunder, so I know that was a very close lightning bolt that hit.

Anyway, I dropped my car off yesterday so that the dealer could run a diagnostic on it today (they were booked all day yesterday), and I rented a car from the Enterprise that was right there. They had three different kinds of cars: the small, crappy ones for $45 a day, the bigger, better ones for $65 a day, and the luxury Caddies for $90 a day. For whatever reason, the guy told me if I wanted, he'd knock the Caddie down to $59 a day, and I figured, what the hell. When I got in the car, it was literally brand new with only 11 miles on it and they had just taken the celophane off it. It wasn't raining at the time I rented the car, but in retrospect it was well worth that extra money considering what the conditions have been, and how thankful I was to have such a heavy car with airbags and anti-lock brakes and traction control and god knows what else on it.

When they called me to tell me the results of my diagnostic, there weren't any big surprises, but when they listed off what it would cost to fix everything, I said I'd take it somewhere else. I'd never had my car worked on by the dealer, but I see what people mean when they say the dealer is really pricey. There's nothing so wrong with my car that it won't drive ok for a while, so I don't need to get it taken care of right away, which is nice, but I may take it in this weekend anyway. Apparently the problem with my car's power was just that the computer had to be reset (that's what they told me, anyway), and sure enough it seems better. Oh well, I guess I'll just hold my breath and hope that it's ok until I can get it seriously looked at.