End of Four Days

I started these four days off with a six mile hike and ended it with a six mile ride on my bike. In between I ate and slept.

Housing Bubble Blog

I'm not sure what the purpose of this blog about the housing bubble is, but there are some interesting posts about the housing situation around the country. Well, it might be interesting if you are a homeowner and are thinking about investing in real estate.

Yes, it is Memorial Day and here I am indoors reading blogs. Maybe a bike ride later today.

Just use Cash!

Why do some people use a credit card to pay for low priced items like a $.99 bag of ice? Just use cash! I had to wait for 5 minutes for the man in the check-out line to pay for one bag of ice! It took me less time to buy $44 worth of food. My general rule is: if the total is less than $20 I use cash. It is not that difficult people - get a clue.

Street Scene 2005

Or should it be called "Parking Lot Scene 2005"? This year the annual Street Scene is being held in the parking lot of Qualcom Stadium. The upside: more space. The downside: a parking lot? They only way I will go is if there are three good bands playing one night. If Garbage, 311 and The White Stripes are playing on the same day then I might go. But how much fun can one have in a big parking lot? The allure of the previous Street Scenes was that they took place Downtown and you could go into the local bars if you got board of the music. Plus, now that both days, Friday and Saturday, are all ages, you are forced to go to "beer gardens" to drink. A beer garden is a nice name for a fenced-in area where you can drink beer in a confined area like a wild animal!

Paris Hilton Made me Eat a Burger

Wow. Advertisements do work. I had a craving for a spicy six dollar burger from Carl's Jr. today. Boy, did it taste good. Especially with beer. Yes, I am a hungry young male - the target audience. I knew I should have invested in their stock the day before the advertisement premired, as advised by some coffee drinking man on CNBC.

After Work Hike

As you can see from the photos below, I just hiked Iron Mt. once again. I was going to do it in the morning, but decided I had time after work to hike it tonight (I got back to the bottom just as the sun set). Plus, tomorrow I can sleep in and get a good start to my four day weekend. Now my reward - a very cold beer!

Made it to the top!

Looking East from the top of the mountain.

Iron Mountain at Sunset

View from trailhead.

A Picture Share!

Car show.

Noise canceling Headphones

For the past six months I have been looking for some kind of headphones to wear at work to protect my ears. I work in a noisy room and I think the constant background noise from the air conditioners and computer fans has damaged my hearing, causing a constant ringing in my ears. Headphones that just block out sound aren't made to be used 8 hours a day. I considered getting a pair of noise canceling headphones but I didn't know if they would work well enough, plus I couldn't find any I liked. Someone at Radio Shack suggested that I try the Bose store. So I went there this weekend and tried their premium headphones and boy did they work well. They can be used without any music and without being plugged into anything. This reduces the noise by taking the sound waves and inverting them, thus reducing the sound you hear. Using the headphones for music, like all Bose products, sounded great. I bought the set and tried them out on Monday. They did a great job of reducing the noise from the air conditioners, but not so good reducing the noise from loud people. There is a side effect though - they make me dizzy and nauseous! I can't explain that. Hopefully I'll get used to their effect and the dizziness will go away.

Final Star Trek Enterprise Party

Last night I hosted a party for the last episode of Star Trek Enterprise. Everyone enjoyed the pizza and beer, the same could not be said about the last episode of Enterprise. The second-to-last episode which aired just before was probably one of the best episodes of the short lived series. Why did it take so long for the writers, directors and producers to realize that what the show needed was character development? The final episode of Enterprise was basically ruined by the characters of Commander Riker and Consoler Troi. I guess the producers decided that the Enterprise cast couldn't carry the story, so they got two popular actors from The Next Generation to join the show. Having them in the episode was a distraction and made the story confusing. There was a reason that Buffy was not in the final episode of Angel. Oh well. Maybe the next Trek series will start up in five years and Rick Berman will NOT be involved.


The highlight of the night was the drinking of Romulan Ale. This blue-green beer is a great novelty but I can't say much about its taste.

Volleyball After 10 Years

For some reason yesterday I decided to play volleyball for the first time in ten years, and today my muscles are in pain! I must be getting old. Well, it didn't help that I did a workout at the gym the day before. I hadn't planned on playing volleyball. In fact I don't even like the game anymore. But somehow I ended up at Mission Bay on a very sunny day after buying a butterscotch milkshake. So I dropped by the place my friend said he would be playing thinking it was too late, but they were just setting up the net. I remembered the basics, bump, set and spike. However, the ball never went the direction I wanted. I got better as the day went on, and must say I played no worse than I did ten years ago. At this rate I won't play volleyball again until 2015. See you there.

Framed Art

I recently had two pieces of art custom framed. The first is a poster that my Dad had stored away. He worked on the Viking project (as well as Apollo). I had this poster custom framed at Aaron Brothers and they did a great job (which they should have for the price I paid).

The second piece of art I had framed was a water color painting by my Mom. She had several water color paintings - this was the largest one. Once again, the frame and matting look very nice. Both of these pictures are now hanging on my bedroom walls.

Digital Telephone

Today two men from Time Warner Cable came to my house to install digital telephone. I had been contemplating getting this service for some time, and finally decided to sign up when I realized that I would save money each month. Now the cable company gets one big check from me for cable, internet service and telephone. I have been happy with TWC over the years, and have added services like digital cable and a digital video recorder. As an added bonus with my digital telephone, I got a new cable modem which takes advantage of their increased speed of almost 5 Mbps (megabits per second). With digital phone, I now get caller ID, which my friends will enjoy more than me, since I no longer need to screen my calls. What's next for me? A new HDTV cable box when I buy a HDTV.

I Can't find Summer

Not the woman, the weather! In Key West is was unseasonably "cold". It got down below 70 degrees at night. Then I come home and find out it rained earlier today and now it is in the low 60s. But enough about the weather, let's talk about airlines. I missed my connecting flight to San Diego (due to a broken hatch on the airplane in Miami that took 20 minutes to fix), was given a ticket on a much later flight and a stand-by on the next flight. Luckily, I was the last standby to board the next flight, so I got home only about an hour late. The plane wasn't full, but there are "weight" restrictions on these commuter flights. Happy to be home and have three days to catch up.

Chosen Spike

I got a surprise in the mailbox today - Chosen Spike. This figure was sent by Diamond Select Toys because I am a member, or Radical, as they call it. Basically a free gift. When I signed up as a Radical last year I was promised a special gift which was at the time a World Tour Willow figure. I never received that figure, so I was happy to see this gift. Chosen Spike came wrapped in a bag inside a small box. This allows me to open the bag and remove the figure, which I don't do for my other figures. Spike is obviously colored yellow/orange for some reason. It is hard to tell from the photo I took, but his mouth is open like he is about to bite someone. I will place Spike next to my Pre-production White Witch Willow where he'll look down upon me as I surf the internet.

Mattress and High-Definition Television

I wanted to follow-up on my experience with my new mattress. After sleeping on sleeping on it for over a week I can finally give my review. First, I bought the Venitia queen sized mattress at Banner Mattress, which really means nothing to anyone. It was close to their top-of-the-line mattress. It is much softer than my old mattress, which I had for only seven years. Do I sleep better? I would say no. However, I no longer have red marks on my shoulders and legs in the morning, so it must be providing less stress on me during the night. I had considered a Tempurpedic mattress, but could not justify paying $2500 for a mattress. So, I guess I'm happy with my purchase.

Now for my experience in shopping for a high-definition television. I went to three stores today and spent much time staring a three different types of HDTVs. I would say that plasma offers the best picture. However, they are about twice as expensive. I have a hard time paying $6000 for a 50 inch HDTV. I looked at a rear-projection LCD Sony, which looked pretty good, but didn't have the sharpness, color or viewing angle of the plasmas. I also looked at several rear-projection DLPs. These suffer from bad viewing angles and background light wash-out. However, I looked at a model from Samsung that looked really good. A sales man told me that Samsung will have a new model out in a month with a "3 chip" DLP that has much better color. That is the dilemma. Ever month prices will come down and technology will improve. So at some time I just have to take the plunge and buy myself a HDTV. I'm looking at mid-May right now, so stay tuned to my blog.

36 Years Later

It is a sad day in Poway. After over 36 years we are selling the family house. We moved in way back in 1969, after our Dad had this house built for his family. Now that our parents have passed away, it is time to sell the house. The second picture was taken last week. Yes, we are standing in the opposite order, but the order of heights is the same.

Bug Invasion

My house is being invaded by rolly-polly bugs! This morning I gathered up five of them and placed them back outside where they belong, just to find more of them headed in. I must admit that those bugs don't bother me at all. I'd much rather have them than the big black spiders I also keep finding (and killing). I attribute the bug onslaught on the copious amounts of rain we have received this year in Southern California. I will be getting new windows and doors soon, so maybe they will do a better job of keeping the bugs out.

Mattress Follow-up

Sunday evening after not getting my new mattress, the delivery man called and said he would deliver my new mattress Monday between 1 and 5. I told him that they ripped my mattress during the delivery today so why do I have to wait up to 4 hours when it was their mistake. He said they have four hour time frames for deliveries, but he could call me 30 minutes before they arrived. Sounds like these guys work for unions and have no flexibility at all. So at 12:45 today he called me at work, so I rushed home in 25 minutes and ended up waiting another 15 minutes. When they showed up it was the same situation. One smart guy, the driver, and one not-so-smart guy who took forever to find my mattress in the truck. Finally they placed the mattress on my bed and took away my old one, which wasn't really that old. This hassle is finally over. Now lets see how well I sleep tonight. I am so tired, that I know I'll fall asleep quickly before 10pm.