Updates

As the calendar turns a page to reveal the blank wall behind December, I thought it would be a good idea to update the look of the blog and reflect on the last decade.

While celebrating at Tim and Jessica’s house and watching Dick Clark struggle through another New Years Rockin’ Eve (time to hang up the mic Dick, I know it’s difficult when the heir to your throne is Ryan Seacrest, but it’s time) to start 2010 and put last decade behind us, I started to reflect on the decade known as “The Aughts”.

A few things in the last 10 years include terrorist attacks in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania that killed almost 3,000 people and changed air travel forever. Those actions directly triggered two wars Afghanistan and Iraq, one which led to the death of Saddam Hussein. Scientists completed the human genome project, discovering the DNA on which humans are built, the Euro became a world currency, SARS caused a worldwide panic, the Space Shuttle broke up over Texas, we put rovers on Mars that sent back amazing pictures of the Red Planet, Pope John Paul II died, Katrina became a cursed name in the Gulf, the United States elected the first African-American president, two recessions beat up on the economy, the second of which we’re still recovering from and almost caused another Great Depression, swine flu made SARS look like child’s play as the first global pandemic in 40 years, Michael Jackson died, and the Olympic games provided a return to Athens and a look at the Chinese culture.

Since I’m a technogeek, I’m more aware of all the advancements in technology that have occurred in the last 10 years. Some of the pieces of technology that we use every day weren’t around in 2000 as we were all concerned that the Y2K bug would end the industrial world, sending us all into darkness and to the days of horses and carriages. Email has become a widespread business tool, and may even kill the US Postal Service. The World Wide Web was slow and didn’t have much of a purpose. Text messaging was just catching on as people were finally giving up their pager messages and cell phones were still an expensive luxury, rather than a must have commodity. Social networking had not entered our lexicon, as Facebook and Twitter had not even been thought of. DVDs just won the format war after killing off LaserDisc, and VHS tapes were still the preferred home movie watching medium. Nobody had HDTVs or televisions that hung on the wall, 300 channels to choose from or TiVo, which changed the way people watched television. No more rushing home by 8pm to catch your favorite show or miss it forever and commercials are skipped with the push of a button. When you needed to go somewhere new, you asked for directions and a scrap of paper to write them down on. Phone numbers at the club were scribbled on the back of matchbook covers or cocktail napkins. People still bought albums, peer to peer downloading was something that young people did on college campuses with their high speed connections to Napster. The iPod hadn’t yet saved Apple from extinction and taken over the world. If you had a question, you asked someone. Now you ask things like Google and Wikipedia. If you needed to save a file, you used a floppy disk. Good luck finding one of those now. Broadband internet access changed the world. You can view news, videos and pictures in seconds. Things that used to take minutes on dial-up connections. The digital world has lead to the 24/7 news cycle, where breaking news is immediately transmitted around the world, and has lead to the decline of newspapers and magazines, which are being replaced by things called Kindles and Nooks. Everything you could possibly want to know is available almost immediately and right at your fingertips.

As much as things change, some things stay the same. As I turn the calendar from 2009 to 2010, much like I did in 1999 to 2000, I’m still a college student, hoping the economy rebounds before I graduate so I can find a new job and start a new career. At least this time around I don’t live at my parents house, and my job pays more than $8.25 an hour. Nobody knows what the next 10 years will hold, but I’m hoping for some more personal achievements in this decade. I’ll have my masters degree soon, I hope to be married and have a family, be a homeowner, and have traveled abroad. I think all of those goals are achievable, and maybe in 10 years I’ll be blogging about it. Or maybe you’ll all be plugged into my thoughts wirelessly through some new technology that has yet to be invented.

Last weekend, Jeanine and I were headed south for Trish’s birthday celebration. For some crazy reason, Trish decided on a restaurant in Huntington Beach on a Friday night. Now, for those of us who are gainfully employed, getting from said places of employment to HB on a Friday night is a dicey proposition. I was departing from Calabasas, and Jeanine started in Downtown LA. My normal route for this trip would be down Malibu Canyon to PCH, which would dump me in Santa Monica, and I could decide from there to take the 10 or Lincoln Blvd. to catch the 405. The trip from work to that decision point is usually ~40 minutes. 40 minutes after leaving work, I was sitting on PCH, moving at 5mph, and hadn’t even reached Pacific Palisades. The best part of the traffic jam was that there was no visible cause. We passed a parked car, and everyone decided it was a good time to give the ‘ol gas pedal a try. So, about 2 1/2 hours after departing, I arrived at our hotel in Newport Beach. Jeanine, who had left Downtown 45 minutes after me, had already checked in and was waiting in the room. Apparently, Downtown traffic is no match for Malibu and PCH.

After arriving at Spark for dinner, and patiently waiting while the tables were rearranged twice for the party of 16, we had a pretty good meal. Service was kind of shoddy, and while some of that can be attributed to the 16 person party, it wasn’t nearly good enough to justify the $140 tip that was conveniently added to the bill. I’ve waxed poetic on this blog about my tipping methods, but I’m always against an automatic 18% gratuity. It gives the wait staff no motivation to serve a large party, as they are already guaranteed 18%. And in case you missed it, yes, the tip was $140, contributing to a $870 bill. I’m sneaking in a flask next time. Following dinner, we embarked on a failed trip to bar hop on Main St. While waiting for Trish to say her goodbyes, we observed the crowd. I’m becoming a fan of people watching, and I’ve noticed that humans are a strange bunch. From the guys on the corner trying to get people to accept Jesus, to the girl with the Size F implants pouring out of her tank top, any given night can provide a cornucopia of people and personalities. After a quick drink at a crowded bar, where I watched in amusement at two guys painfully trying to pick up on a couple of girls who were clearly not interested, we called it a night.

The next day, Jeanine’s cousin Kristine decided to come up from Oceanside with her husband Nick and their newborn Jackie to spend some time with us in the land of silicone and trust funds. While walking to lunch at Balboa Island, I discovered my pseudonym for Orange County needed to be updated to account for collagen. Home chick looked like Donald Duck walking down the street. After a lunch from the sea, it was time to call it a day, and head home for the evenings festivities.

Jeanine works for a theater group, and with that comes some interesting personalities. One of those is Mu, who was part of a comedy group called DC Juicy. I had never seen them before, but apparently they have quite a following. Along with Alex, we were off to see this show in person. My verdict in a word? Wow. That’s all. Just wow. To summarize, Mu, who is a 6′3″ brother, dances on stage as part of a rap group in a Jheri-curl wig, while singing songs called “Do Her In The Butt” while his bodyguards walk through the crowd screaming “In The Butt!”. The show also featured “the bitches” who at one point gave lap dances to the crowd, myself and Alex included, and also clocked someone in the back of the head with their platform heels. I don’t think I stopped laughing the entire time. Good show.

That’s all for me, back to school tomorrow for another 10 week quarter, with the added bonus of an online class as well. At least one of the classes is basically what I have my undergraduate degree in, so I should do well in that class. If not, it would be a bigger shame than a black man failing black history. ‘Cause you know fat people don’t fail cooking. That’s paprika!

While I haven’t posted in awhile, I have been busy adding some new features to the website.

This is going to be an ongoing list of things I see in life that for whatever reason irritate the hell out of me. I’ll try to keep this somewhat humorous, so it doesn’t come off as a list of me bitching all the time.

I added a new link on the right sidebar that allows you to directly IM me on Google Talk. If you’re ever in the mood to say hi, or just tell me I’m a grumpy old man. I’ve given you an outlet for your feedback.

Yes, despite talking mad shit over the years, I’ve been broken, and have joined twitter. My “tweets” are posted on the right sidebar so you know what I’m up to even when I don’t post for two months.

This weekend marked my return to the world of academia. For the first time in over 6 years, I found myself in a classroom with a grade on the line. After getting up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am, I was on my way to Long Beach. Traffic on the 405 is beautiful on a Saturday at 7am, so I was able to get to school in under 45 minutes and thanks to my venti Zebra from Starbucks, I was able to be somewhat functional when the first class began at 8am. I have statistics for my morning class, and after some brief introductions and a self-evaluation of everyone’s math skills (I ranked myself a 3/10, it’s been 10 years since I took AP Calculus in high school, and I skipped statistics at Woodbury) we were on our way. The grading is very test-heavy, with homework optional, but necessary to really grasp the material. After a too-short break, I was back for the afternoon class, which is basically an introduction to management course. This one is participation-heavy, so I was sure to make a good first impression by sharing a story with the class. This class does assign homework, in addition to reading, so I think I’ll spend alot of time doing work for this class.

The drive home wasn’t as bad as I had feared, and it took me just over an hour to make it back up the 405, which was a bit more congested at 6pm than it was at 7 that morning. From there, Jeanine and I were the last to arrive at Jenny’s housewarming party in Santa Clarita, which is so far out in the boonies, that my cell phone doesn’t work, and her address wasn’t in my car’s navigation database. Fortunately, Google Maps was able to show me where she lived, and we made it there about 4 hours after the party began. As I said when I walked in the door, I may be late, but at least I brought beer. Since I beat the sun out of bed that morning, it wasn’t long before I was ready to call it a night and we said our goodbyes and headed back home where I was happy to spend some more quality time with my bed.

I spent Sunday morning knocking out homework for statistics, enough to make sure I understood the material, and got myself acquainted with such terms as “relative frequency distribution” and “ordinal data” before settling into my recliner to watch some football. It’s nice that the first week wasn’t too difficult, but I’m sure the remaining 9 weeks of the quarter will have me losing what little hair I do have left.

Now that I’ve received the official notification letter and I have faxed in my letter of intent, it appears that I’m going back to school. I was accepted to Cal State Long Beach’s MBA Program, which starts this fall. The program takes just under two years to complete, and all classes are held on Saturdays. So after September, my weekends are pretty much shot for 23 months. My goal between now and September is to do as much fun shit as I possibly can, since after that I’ll be either working or doing homework. Fun times.

I finally got around to updating the blog to the latest version of the Wordpress software that runs this whole blog. While I was at it, I decided to add a couple new features to the blog. First, I made the “My World” picture a little larger. If you didn’t know, that’s where I post pictures that I take from my cell phone when I’m out and about. If I see something interesting, or it’s just to say “I’ve been there”, that’s what that section is all about. Just below that, I added an embedded YouTube video. Right now it’s static, which means I have to change it manually. I’m debating adding a plugin that displays a random video in that space, but for now, it will be whatever funny video I want to share with you. And lastly, I added the ability to blog via email. Now that I have a blackberry, I have email at my fingertips wherever I can get a cell phone signal. Hopefully that will lead to me posting more often, but with shorter little updates. Time will tell. Anyway, hope you enjoy.

…from my vacation. Well, it really wasn’t a vacation, since I stayed within a 50 mile radius from home and spent every night in my own bed, but I did keep busy over the last week. I started the mini-vacation by getting up at the asscrack of dawn to give Jeanine, who was sans-car for the day, a ride to work. Sadly, once I get up in the morning, I’m up, so since going back to bed wasn’t an option, I decided to hit up the gym, which is pleasantly empty at 8 in the morning. From there, I met up with Tiffanie for lunch since she couldn’t make it out for my birthday, resisted the urge to buy a radar detector at the Sharper Image going out of business sale (even at 30%-60% off, everything is too expensive, it’s no surprise they are going out of business), and went to pick up Jeanine to get going on the real reason for taking the day off; catching the Mary J. Blige & Jay-Z concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Since we took the subway to Hollywood, we arrived pretty early, and for a hip-hop show, that means you’re gonna be sitting around for awhile. The delay gave us plenty of time to people watch. All I’ll say is that I know I’m not the smallest brother around, but if you weight 300+, spandex is not your friend. The show was pretty good, both MJB and Jigga were great, and thanks to the $30 blanket I bought to ward off the evening chill, we had a great time. After unknowingly catching the last train home, I finally crawled in bed a little after 1am, ending a very long day.

Day two was a little more relaxed, as the only thing I really did was attend a taping of The Tonight Show, courtesy of Jessica, who hooked it up with some great tickets (2nd row on the floor) on short notice. The guests for the night were Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and John Woo & Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar). If you check out the video from the show on April 17th, you can spot Peace and I shaking hands with Jay Leno before his monologue, I’m in the brown t-shirt, and Peace is in the gray shirt to my right. From there, I caught up with Scott over dinner, and called it a night. Friday, Jeanine and I headed as far away from home as I would be for the entire week, as we went out to Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in Lancaster. Going on Friday was a great call, as there weren’t alot of people there, which makes it very easy to take pictures. We learned that even if you walk around for two hours, poppies all look the same. The highlight of the trip was catching a photo of the human poppy (see if you can find him here), though Jeanine might argue that her highlight was watching me prance through the poppies, trying not to step on any of them on my way back to the trail. After returning home, I met up again with Scott and Brian to head down to Seal Beach for a dinner party one of our old high school classmates was having.

The weekend was fairly uneventful, I think I needed a couple days of chill time. Monday, my brother Scott and I caught the Kanye West Glow in the Dark concert at the brand new Nokia Theater. It was my first time at the new venue, and my feelings are mixed. The size is good (seats ~7,000), but the seats are very close together, and there isn’t enough pitch between rows, so when you get stuck two rows behind Yao Ming, it’s hard to see through the great wall of China (seriously, there was a 6′5″ Chinese dude two rows in front of me, I spent the night moving opposite of him to see the stage). Love him or hate him, Kanye West puts on a great show. High energy from beginning to end, the crowd is completely into the show and singing along to most of his songs. Hell, the show even started on time, no small feat for a hip-hop show, and some Asian dudes next to me offered us some hashish. Good times. I didn’t learn my lesson from Wednesday night, so Scott and I had to hightail it to the subway station so we didn’t get stranded Downtown at 12:30am. In the end, we made the last train home with 3 minutes to spare. Riding the subway at 12:30am is a strange experience. You have some people who were like us, returning from a show in the city, and then you have some people like the crackhead sitting behind us, who dipped into his pocket, pulled out a white substance, dipped his finger in it, and then smeared the substance on his gums. What was this white substance? I’ll let you be the judge. Arriving back home at 1:30am again, I was up bright and early the next morning to return to work. I should have taken an extra day off to recover.

One thing I did get accomplished during my pseudo-vacation was to upload a ton of pictures, as promised weeks ago. So, for your viewing enjoyment…