8:45 PM
Marty Sklar is one of the few remaining 'old timers' at Disney for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. In countless old Wonderful World of Disney telecasts you can see him standing and working right alongside Walt back in Disneyland's early days. He has been with the company for at least 50 years and since 1974 he has been the Vice Chairman and Principal Creative Executive of Disney Imagineering, a department that by all accounts has been downsized to the point of irrelavance by Michael Eisner.
His glowing support of Michael Eisner in an OC Register (u:socalscan p:socalscan) commentary over the weekend has me scratching my head.
Most of us park watchers are expecting Marty to retire on or around Disneyland's 50th birthday next year. I personally was hoping he would stay with the company for as long as possible to help restore the declining quality level of attractions in the parks, but alas, it appears that's probably not going to happen. Disneyland hasn't gotten any new innovative, 'industry-first' attractions since Indiana Jones opened up in 1995 - almost a decade ago.
Between his article above and some comments he made back when Tokyo DisneySea opened, it's looking more and more like Marty has more of an interest in watching the bottom line than he does in engineering new guest experiences. Which is fine if you're a corporate officer. It's his job I suppose.
He's in a tough spot, sure, being pretty high up in the company and all. But to just come right out and say that Michael Eisner is doing a great job...I dunno man. He does work with the guy, and I've never met either one of them.
10:29 AM
Yesterday was probably the worst day at work we've ever had.
We were the target of a DDOS, one that was so large it overwhelmed our routers. Our upstream providers were slow to react to our requests to filter the traffic, so that only made things worse. Every site that we hosted was up - but unreachable.
We have many pissed off customers right now, and all of our employees are frazzled. Everything's fixed now, but it's going to take a while for us to regain our customers' trust. We really appreciate our customers, and there are plenty who understand the situation, but some are just really mean and hateful.
It seems to me that if your site has been hosted with us for three years without fault - and then becomes unreachable for the better part of a day - you probably don't need to threaten legal action (which is overruled by our terms of service anyway.) Our admins busted their asses to get things up and running again while customers left profanity-laced messages in our voicemail and flooded our fax machine.
So the search for a new router is on, and hopefully Black Monday won't ever happen again.
8:30 AM
If you'd like to start using Windows Update v5 before XP SP2 is ready, now's your chance. Tell it that yes, you are already a beta user (second option) and you won't have to register or anything.
12:47 PM
Today Disneyland raised admission fees $2.75. A one-day adult ticket now costs $49.75.
In addition, they've introduced a new lower-cost annual pass exclusively for Southern California residents. At $99 the "Select Annual Passport" is the cheapest of the bunch. It includes a whopping 170 blockout days, but it pays for itself after just two visits.
Luckily we renewed our Premium passes a few weeks ago, because those just shot up $54 each, from $225 to $279!
1:22 PM
The other day on All Things Considered, they were discussing how the mass of affordable housing is quickly moving east out of Los Angeles and into the Inland Empire. A map of the Inland Empire reveals that it "officially" starts around Ontario and extends quite a ways east into Banning and Idyllwild. That is far, folks.
Listen to part one of the three part series. It will almost bring tears to your eyes to listen to these tales of people who live in Victorville and drive to work in Los Angeles five days a week.
During the show I learned of people called "supercommuters." These are people that drive at least 150 miles EVERY DAY to get to and from work.
And here I am complaining about my shitty little 66 mile a day drive. I shouldn't say anything about my drive anymore - now I see I'm living the good life!
10:51 AM
How well do you know your neighbors? How would you feel about them if you learned that they had donated, say, $2000 to John Kerry's political campaign? Or George Bush's? Or Al Sharpton's?
Feed your address to Fundrace's neighbor search and within seconds you'll get a complete listing of all political donations made from people in your neighborhood! The dollar amount, the candidate, and the donator's name and address are all a matter of public record once the money changes hands.
10:15 AM
I am more than a little irritated that I didn't learn about this symphony performance of Final Fantasy music here in LA until today - and now it's already sold out.
Plug the audio-out on your scanner into your sound card, and Scanner Recorder will record anything it picks up - but it'll pause the recording when there's silence. So if you're not around when something goes down, you don't miss a beat. AND you don't have to listen to silence. It's like skipping commercials! Pretty cool!
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I subscribe to a mailing list called SoCalScan. It's a pretty high-traffic list (1200+ members) that discusses scanners and interesting frequencies in the Southern California area.
I'd say that 90% of the posts to the list are all related in some way to listening to fire or law enforcement. I hate listening to fire and law enforcement. I'd rather listen in on local businesses, film crews, and theme parks. But there's no other SoCal-related email lists around that I know of, so I put up with it - crazies and all.
Oh yeah. There are quite a few whackjobs on there. There are people on there with multi-megabyte archives of photos of POLICE CARS AND HELICOPTERS. I'm not making this up, folks. They get off on that stuff.
Whenever a high-speed chase ends, someone will post something to the effect of "Tsk tsk. When will these ruffians learn that crime simply does not pay?" I honestly think a lot of them just failed the physical or something and never made it out of the police academy. I'd call it an unhealthy obsession.
There's so much more floating over the airwaves than boring police calls and fires, but most people with scanners - at least on this list - don't seem to care. It's a little irritating, but what can ya do.
Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana's death.
Question: Why?
Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, (check the bottle before you change the spelling) followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines.
This is sent to you by an American, using Bill Gates' technology, and you're probably reading this on your computer, that uses Taiwanese chips, and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant transported by Indian truck drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexican illegals...
10:52 AM
Our good friends Stacy and Steve are getting married in October. As an early wedding present we decided to hook them up with http://www.steveandstacy.com/ which officially opens its doors today. (stacyandsteve.com was taken!)
It only took me about a day and a half of solid work to crank it all out, which is record time!
9:57 AM
Morning Edition host of 25 years Bob Edwards is being pushed out as the network searches for younger blood.
I guess I'm a little indifferent about it. I never really disliked Bob, but I never got in my car and was like "Bob Edwards in the morning. HELL YEAH."
11:33 AM
If you're a big music downloader, you are no doubt annoyed with untagged or improperly tagged mp3 files.
MusicBrainz Tagger will examine your mp3s, compare them to a central database, and apply the correct tags to all of them. If your mp3s aren't in the database, you can elect to submit the proper tags.
MusicBrainz Tagger is to mp3s what CDDB (aka freedb) is to CDs.
Maybe the most impressive paper project I've seen is a full size replica of the M41-A Pulse Rifle from Aliens. It's full size, it's in full-color, it has moving parts, and it prints out on thirty sheets of paper! Truly amazing!
4:20 PM
If you want unlimited internet on your phone and you're using Nextel or Boost, you don't need to pay the extra $3.50/mo (Nextel) or $0.20/day (Boost).
First you need to find out your Sub ID
Nextel:
Menu/Net/Nextel.com/Sub ID
Boost:
Menu/Web
Hold down menu button
Go to 'bookmarks'
At the error message, hit 'menu'
Pick 'go to site'
Go to 'iamslow.com'
Pick 'send net alert'
Pick 'send'
You'll see your Sub ID listed at the bottom of the screen.
Nextel and Boost:
Send yourself a net alert either from the site above on your phone OR by using your Sub ID to send yourself an alert from this form.
Now whenever you want to go online you can just open up the net alert that you sent yourself and you'll be launched into TekniWap, a free service from TekniDude. No extra charge!
There's actually an even easier way of doing this, and you don't need your Sub ID for it! I know it works with Boost, but I haven't had a chance to try it with Nextel yet:
Just send yourself a text message from either Nextel or Boost's website with a URL in the body of the message. Any URL will do. Something like http://www.google.com/ would be good. TekniDude's WAP site, http://www.teknidude.com/wap/index.asp, is a great one too. Once you receive the message on your phone, you can click any link that's been emailed to you and the web page will pop right up!
It looks like every phone on the Nextel network has internet access included in its regular service charge. Nextel/Boost just charges for access to their own bookmarks/homepage. That's weird huh? Kind of sneaky of them to not tell their customers what is and isn't included in their service.
3:05 PM
The concrete walk in front of our house doesn't get a lot of sun, and as a result it has slowly turned green from algae growth. It didn't smell funny or feel slippery or anything, but man it bugged me having green stains on the walkway.
So I did some research!
I guess the traditional way of cleaning algae or mold off of a sidewalk is to rent a powerwasher for a day and just spray it off. However some people say that repeated sprayings will actually damage concrete! And renting or buying a powerwasher would have been expensive.
So I did some more research!
There was a simple chemical solution to my problems! You're thinking bleach, probably. So was I! But no! Pool chlorine is actually much stronger than say, Clorox bleach. There's even another pool chemical called "shock" which is basically super concentrated (x10) pool chlorine that you'd use to clean up your pool in a hurry if you let the chlorine level get too low.
So I got a small brush with a four foot handle and a bottle of granulated pool shock at Home Depot a little while ago and went to work! At first I tried putting some shock in a bucket and adding water, then dipping the brush in and scrubbing away at the algae. That worked, but not very well.
Finally I just sprinkled the shock all over the walkway, sprayed it lightly with water to get it moist, let it sit for about ten minutes, then scrubbed it lightly with the brush. Two applications later and the concrete walk looked like a concrete walk!
I was really happy! For about six hours! Then the burning and the rashes began.
I thought I was really good about keeping the liquid off of my hands when I was working, but apparently I wasn't good enough. Shortly after finishing I noticed itchy rashes and some small bumps starting to appear on my hands. The moral of this story is to wear gloves when working with super powerful chemicals, because even if they don't hurt you right away they'll come back to haunt you later!
5:02 PM
I totally supported Charlie Ergen's stand against Viacom last week. I've been nothing but happy with my Dish subscription and Charlie has consistently showed that he's willing to fight the big boys to keep my monthly bills from inflating out of control.
Dish and Viacom resolved their contract dispute yesterday, and I'm sure it wouldn't have happened if Viacom hadn't caved in some way.
And so to make up for a day and a half of no Viacom programming (which, honestly, I didn't miss all that much) Charlie's giving all subscribers a $1 credit on next month's bill along with a free pay per view coupon. Pretty sweet!
11:59 AM
Yesterday I found myself without a car, so I was stuck at home and didn't go to work. Luckily Tammy's mom was able to drive down with her truck and she and I went to Target to pick up some patio furniture.
Tammy and I had wanted to buy outdoor furniture last year, but by the time we had decided on a set that we liked, everything had sold out and nobody was carrying patio furniture anymore. We vowed not to let that happen in 2004.
Now sitting in our tiny backyard we've got a patio table, six chairs, and two lounge chairs - all matched. They were the last unopened set in the store, so we lucked out!
Now we can actually sit outside on nice days to eat or read or use wireless laptops! It's like we just gained another room!
10:53 AM
Well I finally ditched my TDMA dinosaur from AT&T, in part because of this article, but also because the phone itself (a trusty Nokia 5165) was getting a little worn.
I really hate long term contracts and monthly billing, so I've chosen to go the prepaid route! If monthly billing options dropped down to $10 or so I might consider doing that, but I'm a really light user and pre-paid works out to be cheaper.
So I started looking around at what my options were. I had been using AT&T's Free2Go Wireless plan, and not only was that costing me about $0.35/min, but the minutes expired after 45 days if you didn't use them all or add more minutes to your balance. It was pricey by monthly billing standards, sure, but it worked out to $16 a month and gave me 71 minutes which was more than I ever needed.
In the end I narrowed it down to Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile. Virgin's rates are $0.25 for the first 10 minutes used each day, then $0.10 for every minute thereafter. Not too shabby, but it's rare that I use the phone more than 10 minutes a day. Plus, Virgin only lets you choose one of three insanely boring phones.
The winner was Boost Mobile at $0.25/min - their minutes don't expire for 90 days. Boost Mobile is actually the pre-paid arm of Nextel, and it uses the Nextel network. That means that I can use their walkie talkie direct connect to other Boost or Nextel users for a $1/day flat rate! Suhweet.
So last night I went to the Nextel store by my house and picked up a Boost starter kit which included a Motorola i730. They were out of USB data cables though, so it'll be a while before I can add ringtones of me singing songs.
"The Creative Advisory Council objective is to bring together a cross section of Guests to represent active collectors and other Disneyphiles who frequently visit the Disneyland Resort to discuss product, special events and Resort initiatives.
The group is used as guiding voices for product development and special events through 'sneak peeks,' and open forum discussions. Applications will be taken until March 31, 2004."
If selected, you'll be on the council for a full 12 months. This is the first time they've accepted applications online.
Note that you're not registering for an actual event. They're just re-using that web form to process the applications.
1:59 PM
We met our new neighbors last night. They appear to be pretty cool people! They're young like us! And they bought their house before they got married, just like us!
They're also fixing up their house in ways that we can only dream about. I'm a little envious, but they're nice folks so it's all good.
10:16 AM
I used to have a bunch of those handheld electronic games back in the pre-GameBoy days of the 80s. I still have five or six of them that I'm hanging on to in the hopes that they'll be worth big money someday.
The definitive online guide to collecting these games appears to be a site called Handhelden.
2:50 PM
When you call to order DSL service, the first thing the phone rep will do is measure the distance between your house and the nearest phone company central office (CO) or remote terminal (RT). If you're too far away, you don't get to play.
For example, the technical limit on 2mpbs ADSL is 16000 ft. If the wired distance between you and them is more than that, you're out of luck.
The DSL Service Locator is the very same tool that those ISPs use to trace your distance from the local CO/RT. Not only will it tell you your distance, but it'll also trace the route on a map that the wires take through your neighborhood.
I was a little surprised to find my house just 4084ft from the nearest CO - literally within walking distance!
12:14 PM
If I hadn't ruined it for you just now, you might not realize that all the business about the NS-5 model over at http://www.irobotnow.com/ is actually a promo for the upcoming film adaptation of I, Robot.
A blurry Flash video teasing the film reminds me of how much I like robots and how cool they are.
1:02 PM
I didn't think Lost in Translation was a bad movie. I don't think it deserved the Oscar for best picture though (and it didn't.)
However.
Bill Murray did deserve the Oscar for best actor.
Man when they announced it, you could tell that Bill was crushed. I felt so bad for the guy. I just wanted to call him up and go "Hey man, don't worry about it. You may not have gotten the Oscar, but tonight you got a Brettscar. Let's go spend a week in Hawaii with our wives for a week to chill out and put all this behind us. I'll buy you a Mai Tai."
But I don't have his phone number. And he's never heard of me. And I don't have enough money to go to Hawaii.
12:14 PM
Oh yeah, my DSL speed upgrade kicked in over the weekend. It is NICE!
It's funny...on the T1 we've got here at work, I can get about 900kbps down, which was pretty close to the 1300 I'd get at home before. But now after the upgrade I'm pulling downloads at about 5200kbps! It's enough to make you want to dance through your neighborhood naked.
11:10 AM
I just learned this morning that we're moving offices and my daily commute is about to be extended by 30 minutes each way. I knew moving to the OC was going to bite me in the ass.
I was really getting sick of the drive already and this doesn't make my life any easier.
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