Arizona Hoochness

Adoption Works! Ask Angelina

2007-01-22T00:19:00.000-07:00

Ok.. let's see if this works.. I adopted a gatito (now that we only have 1 left at home!)

Heh.. Hooch Boy would probably like this. (you have to click "MORE" in order to play with it, hee).

Look Mami! No Cavities

2006-11-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

Hooch is in the "No Cavities" Club, which is great news.. yet why oh why does he get accosted by people bearing CANDY???

I'm not exaggerating: Hooch has been offered:

1. GUM from a viejita at Mervyn's (to be fair to her, he was saying, "I want chicle! I want chicle!" and she was only too happy to oblige)
2. TWO candy bars from a Pinoy grandma (it's the same as saying "hi!"). I wouldn't have minded as much except that she offered these to him at the same time I was peeling an orange for him to snack on.
3. THREE candies which were on the buffet line (next to the chicken adobo and the biko)
4. BIG BAG of candy from my hooch co-worker who claims we she gives him candy because we don't... (oh and because we punish him by giving him soy milk and organic snacks!)

**Sigh**

La teoria del cordón

2006-07-25T21:47:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here watching/not watching a NOVA special about "string theory".. This is fascinating! But I really want to discuss a comment made by one of the scientists, who were trying to "pull the string" on the theory.

This particular academic was stating that string theory could not be proven, since these are subatomic particles, and that there was no way that it could be tested, or proven.

All I'm thinking is, hey, atom smashers are live and well.. ya never knoooow! It's a little irresponsible to discredit something just because you don't see it. Hmm...a theory is just that, a theory, and can lead one towards another theory, etc. etc. until one is proven.

*Sigh*... Anything just so I don't have to do homework...drat! The lengths I go to.

¿Piedra, Papel o Tijeras?

2006-06-17T12:06:00.000-07:00

OK....so it's Saturday, and Stack0 asked me to change the channel.. to the USA RPM, rock paper scissors, ah, championship?? Allrighty... I'd never, ever have imagined this.

Sound bites from the event:

"The tension is so thick you could cut it with scissors."
"Women start off with scissors 53% of the time... If the woman has short hair, that number shoots up to 68%."
"Rock paper sissors are immaulate. It's the game of the people."

So if you think this is a joke, the $50,000 prize is not. Hey it's never to late to start training a Hooch Boy...

So Long, Gatita!! Te Extrañaremos

2006-06-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

Gatita has been lost for more than two weeks now... I guess I've finally come to the realization that she is gone. OK, I pretty much figured that after the guy from the Animal Control said, "You live by the mountains? Oh yeah, un Coyote!"

Gatita was given to us as a kitty by some friends of ours. She lacked a name, and nothing befitted her more than the name "gatita." She was with us when my sister left the door open and lost "Gato", our siamese, and welcomed "Bucky" our new siamese, into the family. He quickly became her best friend.

Gatita loved to mew. She also loved to pee in the most inopportune places. Nonetheless, we loved her.

Ay Gatita... hope you had a happy life, as much happiness as you gave to us.

A new baby! Well..not really

2006-03-29T00:48:00.000-07:00

I know, I know... we haven't posted for a while - But we have a good reason! Stack0 and I were working on our Favorite Congressman's Campaign Website, which is now officially finished!!

I don't think I've ever slept this little (maybe when Hooch was born), but now it's (alas!) finished.

So... please keep reminding me to post, as I promise to do so as soon as I have time (ok, maybe when I have a Little Time).

The Colorful World According to Hooch...

2006-03-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

It's no surprise that Mexilina's and my latests posts are about Hooch boy. It almost seems like he's becoming smarter exponentially. This also means he is more demanding of our time, and it's more difficult to keep him preoccupied with things that don't require our complete attention -- not that we try to, but sometimes we need a break, even from Hoochness.

Anyway, anyone who has children knows that coloring in brief doses is an activity that is always fun. Being the digitally addicted parent that I am, I, of course, found numerous sites that allow you to print illustrations for the Hooch.

Here are some of our favorite finds:

Crayola Creativity Central: Duh! But, you have to register to print the coloring activities

"Coloring Books" website: This site has a good number of coloring illustrations, but I'm waiting for Disney or Warner Bros to slap them with a law suit.

Kid Explorers Coloring Pages: No, I'm not a religious person, but the site has some interesting coloring pages. With the recent Intelligent Design debate, I think it's a hoot that they have dinosaur pages :)

Disaster Activity Books (by the Red Cross): Yes, you too can teach your kids about disaster... using a crayon! Oh yeah, you can download the coloring activity books in English, Spanish, and one other language. Can you guess it? If you guessed the the 9th most common language in the United States and the 20th in the world, you would be right: Vietnamese. I guess the Red Cross must know some statistic about the Vietnamese and disasters that the rest of us dont know. Right? As for filipinos, we don't need no stinkin' disaster coloring book. For one, we'd find some enterprising way to make a quick return from the resulting chaos (no, I'm not hating), and for another, the filipinos as a whole are patient survivalists, meaning we'd just as well wait out a disaster if it suits us -- as long as we have enough rice, fish and adobo.

Where's the Car?

2006-03-01T23:42:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to do a quick post.. there's so much going on around the country, but heck, it's all bad news! So I will enlighten you with a story of a Hoochie Boy:

When Hoochie's bedtime rolls by, we brush his teeth, put him to bed, and read him a story. His latest books are the "colors" and the "shapes" mini books that Stack0 bought online. Lately, though, after we say "good night," he is getting up and begs for "agua!" or "caca" (yes, it's potty training time). A couple days ago, he added a new one: "Where's the caaar?" he asks. Stack0 then goes to the living room and picks out a hotwheels, and proceeds to give it to Hoochie. Yes, Hoochie, in lieu of a teddy bear, sleeps with a hotwheels car.

I swear we are raising him with gender neutral toys; I even (I confess!) bought him a tea set (hey! what if he wants to be a chef when he grows up). Yet, I think there's a C gene that just makes him love cars.

We have already determined the H gene, by the way. And I think it's transferrable through the Y chromosome.

Stewie to replace Jay Leno

2006-01-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, not quite. But, Mexilina will still be salivating over the fact that Stewie's saucy mouth can be heard in another medium. She was probably one of two people who downloaded the Stewie widget from Yahoo so that you can hear a Stewie quote at your clickable pleasure. The other person is, of course, is the programmer who made the insane and annoying Stewie widget.

Thank goodness it'll only start out as an internet show for now. Hahaha! Anyone who's ever watched Space Ghost or Alf for more than 5 minutes in their own talk shows knows that the internet will probably the only place Stewie will ever host his own show -- unless Stewie gets scheduled next to MXC or Maximum Exposure, my two favorite shows on Spike TV :).

Firefox 1.5 AVI Plugin Fix (using Quicktime)

2006-01-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

This hack has to do with the plaguing Firefox problem of viewing embedding AVI files on webpages. If you try to view an embedded AVI file in Firefox, you'll get a screen similar to this:

Well, if you're observant, you'll see an option at the top of the webpage to install the missing plugin... yeah!

But, wait! If you're bold enough to continue:

WTF? So, someone's pulling your tail, and it isn't your toddler son who likes pulling on animals' tails until they yelp for someone to save them from misery :). So, what do you do? That's obvious, do a Google search! If you're like me, you found that there are hints or promises of a fix for this problem, but alas, you will be left unsatisfied. Bastards! If you know what you're doing and you like viewing the movies in a separate application, there's a extension to edit firefox's mime types store. I don't know about you, but if a web page has an embedded video, I like to view it in its natural environment. So, what do you do? Scream at the mozilla developers for not allowing users to edit their own mime types/plugins/actions directly within firefox? Sure, that help eases the pain and the frustration of a firefox existence. Or, you can hold on to your knickers folks, and follow the instructions below. It requires a bit of editing in notepad, but it shouldn't be too bad. Here are the steps for Windows XP:

Close all instances of Firefox. Very important.
Make a copy of the Firefox's pluginreg.dat. Put it somewhere in case of a royal fubar. This file is usually found in the user's "Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox." So, for example, if your username is HobBope, then you would make a backup copy of the file "C:\Documents and Settings\HobBope\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\pluginreg.dat".
In notepad (or in your favorite text editor), open the same pluginreg.dat

Find the first reference to quicktime. You can just use the simple search in notepad under "Edit->Find..." or CTRL-F. The text region of interest should look like this or something simimlar:


C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npqtplugin.dll|$
|$
1136402728877|1|1|$
The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.|$
QuickTime Plug-in 7.0.3|$
7
0|application/sdp|SDP stream descriptor|sdp|$
1|application/x-sdp|SDP stream descriptor|sdp|$
2|application/x-rtsp|RTSP stream descriptor|rtsp,rts|$
3|video/quicktime|QuickTime Movie|mov,qt,mqv|$
4|video/flc|AutoDesk Animator (FLC)|flc,fli,cel|$
5|audio/x-wav|WAVE audio|wav,bwf|$
6|audio/wav|WAVE audio|wav,bwf|$

Increment the number as shown in red by one. In this example, change the "7" to an "8".
Add a line after the last element with the following line (note: the number on this new line is one less than the number you increment with in step 5):
```
7|video/x-msvideo|Windows AVI File|avi|$
```

Your changes should look like this with the changed/added text in green:


C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npqtplugin.dll|$
|$
1136402728877|1|1|$
The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in Web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.|$
QuickTime Plug-in 7.0.3|$
8
0|application/sdp|SDP stream descriptor|sdp|$
1|application/x-sdp|SDP stream descriptor|sdp|$
2|application/x-rtsp|RTSP stream descriptor|rtsp,rts|$
3|video/quicktime|QuickTime Movie|mov,qt,mqv|$
4|video/flc|AutoDesk Animator (FLC)|flc,fli,cel|$
5|audio/x-wav|WAVE audio|wav,bwf|$
6|audio/wav|WAVE audio|wav,bwf|$
7|video/x-msvideo|Windows AVI File|avi|$

Save and close the file. And, you can now view embedded AVI files in Quicktime.

I chose Quicktime as the player for AVIs because I prefer quicktime, but you should be able to use any application that can view AVI files. Of course, you might need to add additional lines, depending on whether your player of choice is already included in the pluginreg.dat file or not.

Googleness - How Dreamy... ?

2005-12-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone is going to Google. A couple of days ago, googleblog posted an entry mentioning an old co-worker (he's the guy in the white shirt in the second and third picture from the top). And, yesterday, I found out that a friend, named K Krishnan, just got accepted at the Mountain View office as a project manager. Of course, she's debating whether to go to Deloitte and Touche or to take the Google offer. Personally, I think it's a no brainer. Who wants to work for a company whose name is one phonetic transpose from two very unsanitary implements? (in American English, that is) :)

Well, last night I dreamt about being hired at the big G. Needless to say, it was quite a stressful dream, probably because I recently applied to the Google Phoenix office, and I have a personal statement to write, and I'm debating on whether to apply for the CS masters degree (which means I have to take the GRE soon -- real soon), and I don't know where my position might be after the summer when my grant expires, and I'm working on a someone's campaign site, and I'm committed to write a small program to dump schedule data from a database for a doctor's office, and well, the beginning of a semester begins another month of chaos for me. The sad part is that Mexilina is just as busy. It's probably true that 1) I am a self-diagnosed ADD or 2) I am a card-carrying member of the multitasking/"continuous partial attention" generation or 3) both. It's obviously choice 3. I wonder if humans will ever get to the point where our brains will explode from reaching information overload :).

Anywho, back to my Google dream: They first sat me down in an area where all the software engineers were working while I was waiting for someone to interview me. Then, this rude engineer (someone with a vendetta to fulfill) came up to me and handed me several pages of economics questions as part of my interview. The best part was that all the questions were handwritten and illegible. I went back to the guy and asked him very nicely to clarify the questions, trying my best to hint to this virtual interviewer that it might be better if the questions were typed. As most of my dreams are (e.g. ironic), he returns with the handwritten questions SCANNED with the addition of pictures (not graphs, just some pictures), all of which made even less sense to me.

So, while I tried my best to answer/decipher the questions, I overheard this interviewer talking to another engineer about his great idea to create a new search engine for people's email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and other personal information much like one can do with celebrity information on Google. Of course, I had to speak up and say, "Why don't you use Google's existing search?" As everyone knows, one treads carefully when trying to contradict an interviewer, but heck, it's my dream :). So, we debated about whether his search could be done with Google's existing search or not. In the end, I won because I told him that above all he had legal and privacy issues when applying this search to the general population.

There are other details to my dream that I won't elaborate on. No, no nudity, sex or anything exciting like that, but the other details were relatively unimportant (like the software engineers being teenagers, none of them actually working at computers, etc.). Anyway, I'm one of those people who likes to find a deeper meaning to dreams than just being a function of electrochemical reset button for the human brain. One can't beat a real dream interpreter, but since I don't have one around me, here's the results of some keywords searched at one dream interpretation site, one that is probably just as hokey as the next dream interpretation site.

INTERVIEW: "To dream that you are at an interview, denotes your anxiety over being judged by others."

FIGHT (since I couldn't find DEBATE, ARGUE, etc): "To dream that you participate in a fight, indicates inner turmoil. Some aspect of yourself is in conflict with another aspect of yourself. Perhaps an unresolved or unacknowledged part is fighting for its right to be heard. It may also parallel a fight or struggle that you are going through in your waking life."

EXAM: "To dream that you are taking an exam, signifies insecurities, fear of not meeting others' expectations, and fear of failure."

Ok, so the interpretation wasn't earth-shattering, but it's interesting. If I'm reading this right, I have a fear of being judged by others, meeting others' expectations, and fear of failure. I also have some inner turmoil that is unresolved and unacknowledged. Fine. But, the question that still bothers me is this: Why economics? Economics was actually fun, even though I don't remember a lick of it. Organic Chemistry, now that was the worst...

Chinese Yahoo IM Audible Translations

2005-12-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

So, here's my second installment of the Yahoo IM Audible Translations -- this time for the Chinese audibles. The first installment can be found here. I want to thank Harry W. for his help. The translations might be a little awkward since Harry is a Chinese native, but you can get the gist.

You can get the Chinese audible in Yahoo Messenger by going to "See all audibles"->International->China or by going to "Audibles from other countries"->Emotion... that's right, Emotion. Your guess is as good as mine why the Chinese audibles are called "Emotion." If someone knows the answer to this one, please enlighten me. Of course, one wonders why Yahoo decided to include 3 "I miss you" Chinese audibles....

As before, you can play each audible by right-clicking on the picture and select play.

Chinese: 强！实在是强！
English: Really, Really awesome!

Chinese: 过来..近点...再近点...Kiss！
English: Come closer, closer!

Chinese: 最近真的好想你哦！
English: I really miss you lately!

Chinese: 真真的么？我要晕了！
English: Really, is that true?!

Chinese: 你不要这样嘛
English: Don't do that, come on

Chinese: 真的好感激你啊
English: I really, really appreciate you

Chinese: 你简直太让我感动了！
English: I'm so moved by you! (though it's probably safe to say it's closer to "You melt me" or something similar...)

Chinese: 一定要幸福喔！
English: Please, be happy!

Chinese: 你好可愛耶！
English: You're so adorable!

Chinese: 加油喔！
English: Come on/Work harder!

Chinese: 我好想你喔 ~
English: I miss you so much

Chinese: 真郁闷啊...
English: I'm so depressed...

Chinese: Only You~
English: Only You (an easy translation :)... it's actually from a famous Chinese movie in which the main actor sings this song)

Chinese: 嗨，亲爱的，看见你真好
English: Hi Jenna, nice to meet you

Chinese: 我想你了，特别想
English: I grew to miss you, and now really really miss you

Chinese: 酷不酷啊哥哥
English: Am I cool, my boyfriend? (Yes, that frog on your head makes you really cool)

Merry Xmas! And...Happy Watering...

2005-12-27T21:16:00.000-07:00

In honor of the recent holiday, here's a list of gifts one would never think to buy for me (and apparently didn't think to buy this year):

1. Randy Travis CD compilation ("The Very Best"). I should explain Randy was my high school star crush, one that would never materialize for oh, so many reasons..

2. A Vintage Paper slicer/trimmer. Yes, it's true. I fantasize about owning one, but only the wooden heavy kind. Unfortunately, we have a hooch boy that is too inquisitive, hence no slicer for me.

3. MTV's Pimp My Ride: The Complete First Season. Daammn right.

The only reason I'm talking about unconventional gifts is because of a recent one we (yes, we! even if stack0 refuses to admit his name was also on the gift) gave our young nephew. OK, so it was the 24th, and we already had 2 gifts for him, but wanted to give him one more. So. I went to Target with my sister (his mom) to help me find a gift for him.

Needless to say, the toy section had slim pickin's, there were no mini-basketballs, and we were unsure which "Sponge Bob" videos he didn't own. Then my sister had a bright idea (that's right, I'm blaming Her!). She said, "Hey, he always wants this one thing when we come to the store, and I always say no.. I think you should give him that for Xmas!"

So... we bought it, wrapped it (very creative wrapping), and put it under the tree.

Imagine his surprise when he opened it! His face went from puzzled, to suspicious, then red, then to thinking he was on Punk'd. He was afraid to open any more gifts after that...I think we have traumatized this child for many xmases to come.

And, Stack0 won't let me live it down. I kept trying to explain how he had always asked for one, how he loves the water, how... er... um.. anywho, he kept interrupting me by saying "STOP!" and "Don't Want to Hear It" and "STOP" yet again. Hooch boy, apparently, was also upset at the gift, because he surprised us that night by saying "STOP IT!" while doing the "talk to the hand" motion. It's quite hoochy.

Oh! Oh! This story is so good, it must be fattening!

2005-12-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

I know...we've been slacking off for a while, and YES, busy posting in other blogs (ahem! so much for anonymity! Hooches, HOOCHES, I say!) Today, I'm going to put on Stack0's Tech-y hat on and talk about Yahoo Widgets (not to be confused with Wikis, which are...um, ah, ok I don't know what they are, but they are definitely not Widgets).You can go to http://widgets.yahoo.com/ and download the Widget Engine. It's the BEST! I got it because I wanted my day planner on my desktop, as well as to be able to write quick notes. It can also post a little fish on your screen, or hey hey heey! Get Stewie Griffin w/random quotes!

Btw, Stack0 recommends that you unclick everything but the wizard when installing..it's just the thing to do.

Diebold - where capitalism meets politics

2005-12-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am a technology-phile. I honestly believe that one day there will be androids walking among us; that our MP3 player, XM Radio, cell phone, and camera will integrated into one device and worn on our heads, like headbands, throughout the day, much like a headband or as a wireless earpiece; that one day, we will be able to use RFID chips to find that missing sock or our house keys by querying the house-wide computer system; and maybe one day we'll have a chip embedded in our heads that will stream media directly into our optic and auditory nerves. Yes, I do love technology.

However, all technology must be balanced with wisdom and some with more scrutiny. As much as technology improves our lives and makes us more lazy, there are ways in which it can be abused as well. One such example is the Diebold voting machine.

Actually, Diebold hasn't seen sunny days lately. In November the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (a digital age vanguard) challenged Diebold's request to waive North Carolina's transparency laws for voting machines as well as any criminal and civil liabilities for non-compliance (EFF press release). Later, Diebold tried to circumvent both the judge's ruling and the NC laws all together by "persuading" the NC board of elections to certify the Diebold's voting machines. Of course, it would be illegal if the board of elections did this without verifying all the necessary requirements, including reviewing source code (EFF announcement). There must be a reason for this irregularity, right?

Later this month, Scott+Scott LLC (no a typo) filed a securities fraud class action against Diebold. Then, a Diebold whistleblower, nicely named Dieb-Throat, came forward and revealed just how diligent Diebold is with its software and security. Earlier this week, CEO O'Dell announced his resignation for "personal" reasons. But, my favorite announcement came on Tuesday when a security expert demonstrated in Leon County, Florida how to actually hack a Diebold voting machine in front of a live studio audience (ok, not in a studio, but definitely in front of witnesses, and it was video taped). In today's USA Today article:

The voting system maker, Diebold Inc., sent a letter in response that questioned the test results and said the test was "a very foolish and irresponsible act" that may violated licensing agreements.

Right. As Dieb-throat said, "Diebold System One of Greatest Threats Democracy Has Ever Known."

Images borrowed from Rand Careaga/salamander.eps.

Wal-Mart...Lo Barato Puede Salirte Caro!

2005-11-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

Last night, Stack0, Hooch Boy and I went to the Loft to watch the Wal-Mart movie. Can I just say, it was PACKED! There were more people in line there than at the StarWars premiere (and trust me, I was there).

This movie was great..I shed a tear (or two) because of the lives ruined by this corporate giant. Ugh! We are so buying this film and playing it on Thanksgiving night!

At any rate, props to the guy sitting to the left of me at the theater.. he had lots of comments throughout the movie, but hey, I couldn't help but laugh. Next time you see the Bull, ask him about the phrase, "Back Out~ Back Out!!"

Oh yeah.. important to note: This was the FIRST time we took a Hooch to the movies...and may I add, the LAST. Popcorn was just not enough to placate him. He started getting fidgety and cried for about 5-6 seconds, but it seemed like 5-6 minutes to us. Ugh. Very embarrassing, to become the parents whom we criticize when we ourselves are at the theater. Doh.

VOTO LATINO! (para la igualdad de raza)

2005-11-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

Yeay!! Yesterday was so awesome, I'm still sleepy from all the celebrating!

But seriously, I wanted to share one of the big reasons Leal, Ulich and Trasoff won: People like this very dedicated volunteer, who was wiling to don a mask and provide continuous "visibility."

By the way, Stack0verflow and I saw her at the Hotel Congress celebration, and we both so eloquently praised her "monkey" mask. ARGH! Both of us! She kept correcting us, and then explained to us that the donkey is the animal symbol for the democratic party. Lord! All I could feebly respond was, "Oh, we know, we're just drunk!" Never mind Stack0 had only 1/2 a drink, and I just had, er, a couple of margaritas at our own personal VerdeForce "war room."

Halloween at the Fred Archer Center

2005-10-31T22:16:00.000-07:00

This was hooch boy's first Halloween experience where he was able to enjoy a bit of candy, and let me tell you -- it was not a pretty sight. In fact, it was downright horrific. Cotton candy on his face, carmel on his hands, and chocolate aaaaallll ooooovvvvveeeeerrr. I thought it was inevitable that hooch would be convulsing with too much sugar in his system :).

Anyway, Mexilina, Hooch, and I spent most of the evening at the Fred Archer Center, where they were having a nice Halloween party for the neighborhood kids complete with a haunted house, games, food and drink, and even a Halloween contest.Our favorite contest was the "scariest" costumes category. It wasn't so much that the costumes were scary, but that the last person to swagger into the judging line was a slouching chubby darth vader. Hilarious... I could almost imagine a parody movie being made with such a character... something like Spaceballs II....

If you're wondering who the winner was, he was the middle boy with the white mask and the big red grin. Yeah, not THAT scary. Anyone who has watched the "Halloween" series with Michael Myers (related to Harriet???) knows that it's the quiet, expressionless ones with the short kitchen knives that are the scariest. Ok, maybe it's just me...

Political Humor

2005-10-28T11:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, I rarely write about political humor, and I rarely come across two pieces of political humor in the same day that are just exceptional. The first one is Schwarzenegger Street, which was given to me by Mexilina who got it from G. The second one is a hilarious blog by "Harriet Miers." No wonder she didn't get the nomination! Just read it from the start :).

Yahoo coolness ... ?

2005-10-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, everyone who knows me knows that I am a Google-lite. I said Google-lite, not Google-obsessed :). Anywho, Yahoo came out with a product that totally caught me off guard. Usually, I chalk up many of Yahoo's latest antics to following the the big G, but this time score one for the little y with their new travel planner.

It's cool because you can switch between planner and map mode, make plans for different locations, and better yet, you can even see other people's trip plans (I presume if users authorize them to be public). However, to search other people's trip plans, you need to go through a search page. It would be really nice if you could just click on some link right off of your own travel plan -- it would have saved a couple of clicks, select boxes, and possibly some typing, but hey, that would have made the product really, really cool ... something Google would have done, if it would have thought of this idea first :).

By Special Request: The Propositions

2005-10-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Ooooh... and you thought politics weren't sexy..

Actually, a dear friend asked me about the current propositions on the upcoming city election on Tuesday, November 8th.

PROPOSITION 100 -- "Would you like a Raise?"
This Proposition would increase the annual salary for the mayor ($10,080 raise) and councilmembers ($5,760).

Seriously, these folks don't make much money as it is (mayor makes 42k right now, council makes 24k). Since they make such a small amount, we end up having the "independently rich" (aka "vendidos") run in order to increase their already big coffers. It's time to make it possible for people to run for the good of the city and not for their own personal gain. Therefore, Yes, of Course.

PROPOSITION 400 -- "Would you like a Bigger Budget?"
This Proposition would let the City spend tax money it already has, but can't spend because of state-imposed caps.

If the money is already there, why can't we spend it?? Also, it's not like we're spending all of our revenue, we're still going to have a budget and some for a rainy day. And, I should mention, it's NO NEW TAXES. I say a big Yes.

----Regarding the city council elections.. my friend VerdeForce has submitted his prediction. I disagree, and say,

VOTE UHLICH!!!
VOTE TRASOFF!!!
VOTE LEAL!!!
VOTE UHLICH!!!

Mp3s are a Girl's Best Friend

2005-10-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

I just became aware of various MP3 players that one can wear!! It's a little scary, how small these are, and how soon other gadgets will soon become obsolete.

This is the first one, I admit it peaked my interest to find more.

Here's the second one: Can you believe it plays 10 hours of music?? Though for some reason, the girl reminds me of Star Wars..

There's no doubt about it... next year we'll probably see mp3 players that are placed behind the ear, maybe as an earring back for some nice diamond earrings? That would be amazing! (yet I can totally see it!)

Btw, thanks to my hooch husband for finding all these lovely pictures.. as for me, I'll stick to my Sony Clié w/MP3 capacity..

Interrupts are a fact of life

2005-10-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

I was catching up on my New York Times, and I came across this article about "life hacking," which is a new term for trying to organize a busy, continually interrupted digital life. Gone is the day when a person only needed to worry about phone calls at work. Today's world is all about being connected in a pervasive network of emails, IMs, text messages, and websites -- information overload to the max. It's amazing our brains don't do the "blue screen of death." Anyway, the article was a very fascinating read especially about our every decreasing attention spans and about a few people and technologies that are attempting to make our world less ove. This quote sums up the article: "Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is... we are so busy keeping tabs on everything that we never focus on anything."

Everyone should play with toys

2005-10-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

I think everyone should play with toys -- they induce imagination, fantasy, and can give meaning to the real world. Ok, so what if I have a two year old son -- I get him toys, too :). My personal favorite is legos since you can do so much with them. Anyway, I digress. Apparently, Playmobil has come out with a new "airline security" playset. Cool. Look what this privacy and security author and professor did with his first set. He gave me ideas on what to do with my midterm :).

What's in a tag anyway?

2005-10-07T09:47:00.000-07:00

Social tagging/social classification/"folksonomy" has been an very facinating social phenomenon lately. Flickr ,delicio.us, 43 things, and many others have made it an integral part of their products. On one hand, social tagging can be a means to discover new or related things. On the other hand, social classifications should be taken with a grain of salt since its very definition means that folksonomies can be influenced by social trends, mind sets, and even prejudices of the people doing the tagging.

Anyway, here's a new social tagging site, called Consumating, for dating or meeting new people. Right now, it has a very small set of users, some of which don't yet grasp the concept of tagging (keywords, not descriptions, people!). But, if more people use it, it could conceiveably be a good way of finding and making friends with salad. :)

Music for the Masas

2005-09-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

Saturday night, Stack0verflow and I went with several friends to the Gran Silencio/Molotov concert. We had an awesome time (my legs are still sore from jumping and dancing)!

But aside from the euphony of El Gran Silencio, we got to hear a little known band, barely worth mentioning (los conocen solo en su casa), called "Los Abandoned." No, it's not pronounced "abandoned," it's "lowes ah-band-oh-ned." There. That's the most interesting thing about them, because their music is, ah, hm.. are they a cover band?

After the concert, we went taquito hunting down 6th Avenue. Oh, how I wish Tacos Apson was open 24 hrs! Oh well.

At any rate, the concert was great... there's nothing like a rock en español concert to make you feel young and decadent!

Google ISP

2005-09-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

Heh. Google ISP. Heh. Need Google. Too bad it's not in Tucson yet. Heh. Must have Google. Heh. Click here for the news and click here for the wireless :).

Noticias Weird

2005-09-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all... it's been a crazy couple of weeks, with lots of sad news (Katrina) and bad news (ever listen to NPR?) So I've decided to post bizarro news, if at all to help us work through the banality of our lives. Er, actually, the banality of Britney Spear's life (aunque la mona se vista de seda...)

In August, the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald reported that business is strong for local resident John Flannery, who at age 78 still works 15 to 20 times a month posing for artists as a nude model. [Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 8-11-05] [Bradenton Herald, 8-21-05]

As my thirtysomething birthday passed, I was thinking about all the things I haven't done in my life.. *sigh* where did time go? News like this make me realize that I really can continue with my life goals.. um, all involving a fully-clothed me.

And regarding the news.. please keep watching, keep listening, keep reading. The alternative is worse. I was in class last night and responded to the comment, "You know a lot about computers!" by saying, "Well, yes, I used to be assistant city manager, you know" (allusion to Michael Brown, FEMA, blah blah). And...I got some weird looks. IT'S A JOKE, PEOPLE! Ugh. At least my profesor got it (we were just talking about it 5 min. before).

For census buffs and hole diggers

2005-09-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

I find the latest mapping phenomena as being quite curious. For me, it just satisfies my voyeuristic tendencies :).

Anyway, someone put up yet another google map application using the 2000 census data. Unfortunately, you have to zoom out, drag to your desired location, then zoom back in. Try it out!

Another person put up a google map application that will explore the idea of digging through the center of the earth. By selecting a point on the earth, it will display where the opening of the hole will be on the other side. I can't vouch for its accuracy. Here it is. Apparently, if we dug a hole starting in Tucson, we'd open a hole somewhere southwest of the Indian Ocean. Well, at least we'd have a new irrigation channel.

A little time spent at the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

2005-09-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

This evening we spent a little time at a festival at the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a Yaqui Catholic church that has a little festival every September in their courtyard. It's only for two days, and tomorrow (Sunday) they'll have menudo for $2. Yum!

I'll have a Hooch on the Beach..

2005-09-04T13:28:00.000-07:00

A day at Mission Beach. We would love to live in San Diego, if only we could afford to live here for more than a weekend...

The weather is great here, although the quantity of people on the freeway, at the malls, on the streets, etc. is enough to make one claustrophobic!

Our hotel was quite an adventure: In the middle of downtown, we actually got a room on Labor Day weekend, and with the best rates! 500 west hotel boasts it's a european concept (with bathrooms at the end of the hall and no air conditioning) but we were told by a passerby that this hotel used to be military barracks, so they pretty much had no choice in the matter. At any rate, ($59/night, hello, great rate!) we were very pleased with it, and found it quite charming. Oh, and Stack0 wants to mention that they had flat-screen LCD TVs in every room. No internet access (well; not theirs, anyways) was available in our floor, though.

On the way back, we stopped at Viejas, and had a wonderful time at a fruit stand across from the freeway (snowy acres? agh). All we remember is that their rooster's name was "FRED" and of course, the nicest man who gave us lots of watermelon and hung out with us was named "Jim." Jim was born in the Marshall Islands, but grew up in Saipan(?). The first words he spoke to Stackoverflow were, "You Filipino?"

Yes, "he Filipino." So were 1,843 others at Viejas (Stack0 thought there was a special event going on, but I don't think so). I'm sure it was very nice for Stack0 to hear one's language and familiar faces; too bad we don't have a big Filipino community in Tucson (ah, yes, but we have the Sampaguita club... but that's another posting).

Stack0verflow & Mexilina

Yahoo Messenger Indian Audible Translations

2005-08-29T10:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this has been bugging Mexilina and I. We enjoy the international audibles that Yahoo brought to their latest version IM client, but we didn't know what we were saying to each other when we used them :). So, thanks to VL, I can now IM a male friend knowing that I didn't tell him "You make my heart melt" in Hindi. (Yahoo calls these Indian audibles - Masti or Fun in English). I'll post the other language translations when I can get them. The icons are actual shockwave files so you can right-click on the icon and select play to see how they actually sound...

Hindi: aankhen hai ki batatein...dikhta nahin kya?
English: Your eyes are saying something... can't you understand?

Hindi: bhooooooot
English: ghost

Hindi: OYE! chuk de patte
English: Hey, What's going on?

Hindi: Hai Daiyya..bas bhi karo..log kya kahenge!
English: Hi Daiyya..Enough of the converstation..What will other people think about us!

Hindi: Arre dil pe mat le yaar
English: Don't take it to your heart (or don't take it too seriously)

Hindi: Kya aap mere saath coffee peene chalenge?
English: Will you come to have coffee with me?

Hindi: abbey e..offline ho gaya kya, ya Mr.India bana baitha hai? Lal chasma lagaoon kya?
English: Hey..Whenever you go offline, why do you act like Mr. India? Do you want to wear the red glasses becomes invisible? (A reference to a movie called "Mr. India".)

Hindi: e chal e shaane..hawa aane de
English: Hey smarty..give me some space

Hindi: Arre...yahin to dhokha kha gaya India..
English: Argh...This is where India made a mistake.. (idiom used whenever something goes wrong in India)

Feeling pensive today...

2005-08-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

Today was quite interesting. Signing up for my first class in over a year, I was a bit exhilarated and distraught about hunting down my textbooks. One of my professors, being of the ambitious sort, assigned 4 required textbooks for the course. Let me repeat that: 4 t-e-x-t-b-o-o-k-s. Yes, you can imagine why I was a bit distraught when I started pricing those beasts.

At first, my mind was trying to compute how many Lucky's lunches I would have to sacrifice to put me back into the black, but then Mexilina reminded about one of our great public institutions called the public library. Being a geek but one raised in the last generations before the age of the ubiquitous internet, I feel conflicted about using a library. On one hand, a part of me knows that the public library system offers access to knowledge in almost any format in one physical location; on another hand, I know that I can research just about anything with the advent of an internet search and from anywhere! Regardless, I could not get by this time without actually having to acquire a physical copy of the textbooks.

I have to admit that libraries have gone a long way since the last time I actually had to use one. And, in many ways, I am just amazed at how easily I can access journals and being able to search the card catalog via a web browser, which wasn't even available in most libraries 10 years ago. My only complaint is that I could not reserve my books online -- I could have sworn that I was able to do this at one time or other. Oh well.

So, I was finally able to find 2 textbooks in the U of A Main Library and 1 at the main Tucson library (the other I'm waiting on eBay to buy). So, off I went to get my 2 books from the U of A library. I almost felt embarrassed when I had to figure out how to track down the location of a book by the Dewey decimal system. Luckily for me, the U of A Main Library placed a 3-foot fluorescent poster with all the codes and floors next to the elevator. Being in the library brought back a bit of nostalgia of my undergraduate years, including remembering the type of people that usually frequent a place with walls and walls of bound books. Sure enough, as soon as I stepped onto the elevator, the guy next to me blurted out, "Where are you from?" I had to think about it a little. Being a military kid, I have never felt sure about this question. Does the person want to know where was I raised? Where was I born? Where do I call my hometown? For most people, this is very simple, but I always find myself having to gauge what the person actually is inquiring about. I could tell he was not American by the slight accent -- it almost sounded French -- maybe he was from South Africa. So, I replied, "I was born in the Philippines." He just simple said, "Ah." Shortly after, the doors to the elevator opened, and we left to our respective directions. It made me wonder if that experience clarified any misconceptions he had about how Asians appear.

Anywho, when I walked into shelving area of the library, I was hit by dusky smell of the books. It's quite distinctive, almost thick in the air. In a strange way, I find the scent pleasing, and it even makes me think about the library itself. I kept thinking about all those books, 99.99% of which I would never be able to read, even if I wanted to. It was just unfathomable to me that all that knowledge, in thousands and thousands of dead trees, will never be read by any one person.

After finding my books, I went back to the lobby to check them out. The U of A has these new stations that you can checkout the books for yourself. They're as personal as getting counseling over a yahoo chat. Worse, you don't get to see the friendly face of a librarian. But, today, I was in a relative rush, so I decided to select machinery to the human touch.

Well, after that experience, I was really psyched about getting into my studies. Just being in a library made me feel good, which is odd, I suppose. I would almost say that the library made me want to learn more, not just about the textbooks I had initially come to acquire, but also about everything else. That's something that the internet never really motivated me to do. Sure, the internet gives me access to a greater number of resources and faster, but if one were to ask me today why should libraries exist, I would tell them that libraries provide something that the internet can never do: a physical place where one can read, learn, and ponder about knowledge itself.

Well, that's only a bit of today, but I won't bore you more with what else happened, including my search for a pen on the U of A mall so I can work on today's crossword puzzle. To make a long story short, I stopped at an Army ROTC booth and swiped it from a recruiter who thought I was seriously interested in being an "Army of Juan". If only he knew my past...

Google Talk!

2005-08-24T07:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, Google rocks, uh huh, uh huh! As most of you know by now, I think the big G is the bomb. Well, today they released their own IM client, Google Talk, despite rumors that Meetro was going to be bought. I personally thought Meetro was pretty cool, but in the end, it boils down to how convenient it will be to get your friends on board.

The good thing about Google Talk is that I can use my Gmail account to login (If you need an invite for a new gmail account, let me know). Like Yahoo, you can actually use audio to communicate with your friends, if you have at least a microphone. Better yet, they use an open, non-proprietary protocol called Jabber, which means you can use a whole suite of IM clients if you want to use different software than Google's. And, knowing Google, it will only get better.

Read Google's announcement on their blog. Email azhoochness if you want to know our gmail accounts to add us on your new Google Talk :)

Update: During an install I just found out that Google Talk has a built-in Gmail notification mechanism and asks if you want to uninstall the Gmail Notifier. Double Bonus! So, if you already had the Gmail notifier, just uninstall it and there will be no net change in the number of taskbar notification icons :)

Stop those terrorist babies!

2005-08-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

This is an old news article, but I thought it was funny when I came across it nevertheless. CNN published the article on August 16 about the TSA detaining babies because their names are on the No-Fly terrorists list. Victims of these future, potential Darwin Award-winners are:

Baby Sarden, Female, 1-year old, attempting to board at Sky Harbor International
Baby Zapolski, Male, 11-months old, attempting to board at Dulles International

I'm glad the TSA and airport security are on the job, keeping America safe.

Only in Tucson -- Water Chaos

2005-08-23T10:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a while since I've been busy with the start of the semester, and it usually is like this for the first month of every semester. Such is life of a University employee.

Today I have time to write since I could not drop off hooch boy at his babysitter's. Thus, I'm at home, watching Franklin on Noggin, and trying to get as much work as I can remotely.

Anyway, hooch boy's caregiver called this morning and said that she was afraid to drive today. At first, Mexilina and I thought it was because she doesn't have much experience driving, let alone braving the rain. She has only driven to her sisters and to our house. But after attempting to drop him off at her house, I understand exactly why she was hesitant to leave her house.

First of all, Raytheon must have closed off all their exits, except the one on south 6th. It took me almost 40 minutes to travel between Valencia and the old Desert Diamond Casino. After thinking I was free and clear when I passed that bumper-to-bumper traffic, I noticed a gathering of emergency lights at the road I was suppose to turn. Well, it turns out that the whole area after Hughes road was turned into a Rapid Water park sans the park and the fun. There must have been dozens of emergency vehicles and media to top it off. Needless to say, I had to turn around and call in sick today. I did manage to get a few (bad) pictures of the flooded area, which doesn't do the whole chaotic event justice. But, you'll probably hear about it in the news this evening.

If you want to see a few more pictures, just look at this link to our picture gallery: click here

Bored,er Patrol

2005-08-21T15:54:00.000-07:00

Boy, what is up w/ the CBP checkpoints? this agent (i don't know if you can tell from the photo) had to check us out "a la don johnson;" that is, lowering his shades partway and peering at us from above. Um, yes, we're citzns, but in a totally Related matter, the year, sir, is 2005.

Not that we ever roll down the window. Besides, my status is for me to know and for you to find out (Translation: it's about 115 degrees outside. You may get paid to stand out there at 1pm, but we sure don't).

I-8, between Yuma and Tucson, has got to be the most excruciatingly monotonous drive...but, enough about that. Ya me aburri.

--
Sent from my Treo

Dude, another map?!

2005-08-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

Yet again, another company is building another map (read Wired News August 8th article, read CNET's article published today) Well, this makes sense if you've read my other post of Amazon's new yellow pages.

Anywho, they did add a little twist to their mapping website: you can actually see street-level pictures of a location. Here's a map of where I work. I guess Amazon has tons of money to blow -- they're paying drivers to drive all over the United States on every major road in every major city in these vans that just take pictures, all day. Amazon has already taken more than 35 million pictures over the past year! They plan to do this for the rest of the United States. It makes for a crazy photo album...

Ooops!

2005-08-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well, G notified us that a couple of our personal albums were open for public viewing. It looks like we had 13 visitors who got to see our Missouri/Louisiana vacation and hooch boy during his time in the hospital as a preemie, which was a very crazy time for us. Let us know if you see any other bugs or what you think :).

It's ok to be a Scuttlebutt

2005-08-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a very interesting article regarding research on gossiping. Yes, it's about those dirty little discussions about everyone else. It turns out that they fulfill a social need in the workplace.

"People find it irresistible for good reason: Gossip not only helps clarify and enforce the rules that keep people working well together, studies suggest, but it circulates crucial information about the behavior of others that cannot be published in an office manual."

According to the research, there appears to be levels and types of gossiping. Too much and too little can be detrimental. And, there is a sweet spot to gossiping. Apparently, gossiping can help in preventing depression, the frequency of good gossip is associated with a good workplace (while bad gossip is associated with a negative workplace), and it helps protect social groups by identifying the liars, cheaters, betrayers, and managers who will smile to your face and then stab you in the back the second their boss is around (ok, the last part about the managers wasn't exactly in the article).

Also in the article, they used a word I hadn't heard before, "scuttlebutt." According to the OED, it was a barrel of water on ships where the sailors would drink from daily. I presume that's where the gossip was exchanged :). Can you image? "Hook over there didn't throw away his chicken leg overboard and now there are maggots all over the deck!" or "Did you hear that James and Blackbeard got a little lonely last night?"

Scuttle butt was also a place in which the crew could predict future weather conditions (e.g. if the scuttle butt was freezing, then a cold storm was coming). If only gossip worked like that. So, to all you, scuttlebutters: carry on.

Our Upgraded Picture Gallery!!!

2005-08-15T00:56:00.000-07:00

We've upgraded our picture gallery using the new Gallery 2 software. Now, you can register at that site using your email address, and we can give you access to our personal pictures. We'll upload more recent ones in the very near future.

Let us know what you think!

Saturday Morning Humor

2005-08-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

I love videos about American culture, don't you? Here's something posted on Boing Boing, but I've seen it before. Enjoy the movie (video here).

As most of you know, Mexilina and I love cats. Would you ever see a dog do this? People will upload anything to Google's Video search. Here's something that was posted on Google's blog when they first launched Google Video (video here). If you want something even more, um, disturbing, search for "cat hump concerto" in Google's Video search. Seriously, it is disturbing (don't watch around kids).

Mexilina loves MTV's "Pimp My Ride." There is a reason why "Pimp My Ride" isn't hosted and filmed by white folk, like this video here. Warning: It was so awful, I couldn't bear to watch the whole movie...

Speaking of cars, my mother ("spam from fam") sent me this one. It's a MUCH shorter clip than the previous movie from Malcom in the Middle. The link is a little slow since it originates fom the Netherlands.

And, our final video is an infamous Mastercard commercial. It's priceless. I though I saw this one on television, but I could be wrong :).

Santa Cruz River Farmers' Market: A quick stop-over

2005-08-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

This evening we decided to go to the Santa Cruz River Farmers' Market in Barrio Hollywood (see our previous post). Unfortunately, we didn't arrive until things were dying down so I didn't get to take a picture of the crowd, though I heard MR took some nice shots. As soon as he uploads his pictures, I'll link to them...

Most of the tables were organic growers, which is always a good thing. I don't know if it's just Tucson, but it's hard to find healthy looking organic food in the city. Today was an organic boon! Look at the size of the onion. I don't remember the last time I saw an onion the size of a softball. Mexilina decided to get one to make calabacitas for tomorrow. We also bought roasted chilis, unprocessed honey, unworldly peaches (they literally melt in your mouth), and zucchini. Mmmm, mmm, good.

And, look at the purple and green basil. At least, I think that's what the vendor said it was. I had to take a picture after seeing the deep purple.

Well, we didn't stay long so I didn't find any good pictures. We did see Xena there (that's how we knew M was suppose to put up his photo gallery on Richard Elias' site :)). Anywho, Mexilina and I are going to be there next Thursday...

Circle of Life

2005-08-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Godmother:

"It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes." (listen)
-- Pete Clemenza, The Godfather

I imagine that when someone gets phished, he or she wishes they received a similar message about the culprits :). It appears some scammers decided to use more creative low-tech ways to get people to hand over their passwords (source here). These phishers emailed their targets, indicating that their PayPal accounts were compromised, and that they had to FAX in their passwords using a form provided in a link... from a Polish website, no less. Sheez.

Well, the best part of the new article is that it quotes Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos (antivirus company), as saying:

"Interestingly the phishing gang may have made a huge blunder by including the fax number in their scam. PayPal and the authorities are sure to follow that lead when investigating this matter further."

Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they rigged fax number somehow so that it wouldn't be traceable, even if it is a fully functioning fax number. How would one do that? Well, they would use a service like JFax, which allows you to setup an account tied to one of their tens of thousands of fax numbers worldwide and receive the fax using an email you specify. Duh!

I'm sure you've heard the saying "Art for art's sake." Well, J2 Communications, JFax's parent company, is one of those corporations that loves to "Patent for patent suing sake." In the current free-for-all climate of the US Patent and Trademark Office, companies can patent anything from a better mousetrap to an "apparatus using metal, wood, and a hardened piece dairy product prepared from curd milk to capture small rodents". Yes, gone is the better mousetrap and in with the terminology that makes english teachers check themselves into the county mental ward mumbling "Keep It Simple Stupid", over and over again.

Apparently, J2 Communications and their partner in crime, Catch Curve Inc., has decided to sue Mijanda, another company that also provides fax-to-email services. What's even more disturbing for those of us who like free software development is that Mijanda uses open-source software, and JFax actually suing the open-source software aspect of Mijanda. Doh! Basically, the patents that J2 and Catch Curve are using in the suit are:

In the first patent, if you convert "facsimile" to "digital image" and "circuit or packet switched network" to "internet" and ignore all the extraneous verbiage, the new title would be "transmission of digital images and audio over the internet". Hmmmm, now that sounds like an original patent. As for the second patent, the vague title is a reflection of the vague description of the "invention." Without going into too much detail, it basically defines a digital storage device attached to a fax (e.g. a computer with a fax modem). Read GrokLaw's commentary on the whole sordid affair -- it gives a whole history of J2's current patent rampage with just 22 patents and other topics. It's anyone's guess why J2 and Catch Curve are suing, but it probably wouldn't be too far off if you said it was simply for money...

With that, I leave J2 Communications and you another quote from The GodFather III:

The only wealth in this world is children. More than all the money, power on the earth. -- Michael Corleone

Ah, Que Comadre!

2005-08-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

So hooch boy is way past his time to be baptized, ack! He's almost 2.5 years old, and we have been procastinating, making plans, putting it off, making plans.. First, we had to find a madrina for him: our friend K was a natural choice, and not just because she owns ALL 359 Evil Disney movies, but because she loves a hooch (and has lots of hoochness to share). But, what about a padrino? Is it ok to go through life with just one madrina?

We were talking about this tonight with the "loonee one" (my cousin) and she seemed to think that we need a padrino. The problem is, we can't think of a single man whom we want for padrino! Our conversation went something like this:

Stack0verflow: What about V?
Me: What? are you crazy? That doesn't even sound right. What about G? Oh, no, he has a girlfriend.
Stack0verflow: Ah, but the more godparents, the better. Haven't you ever been to one of those weddings where there are lots of godparents?
Me: Hello! Have I ever gone to a Mexican wedding?

Anywho, I hope whoever we choose, whether it be one or two or three, they'll be better godparents to Hooch than my godmother was to me. Ah yes, I remember her so clearly...from the ONE picture of her at my baptism. According to my mother, she was the sister-in-law to the President of Mexico Jose Lopez Portillo (1976-82, famous quote: ¡Defenderé el peso como un perro!"). Rumor has it she had willed $100 to me, made much more valuable by the catastrophic devaluation of the peso and her brother-in-law, who wasn't quite able to defend the peso like a dog (hey, he said dog--he never said Mastiff, he never said Doberman). Alas, I never did get that money *sigh*.

I think we all should have asked for the e-how on this one.

Grass = Money?

2005-08-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

So, what do you blog about when you've only got about 3 hours of sleep at night for the past week? Grass, of course! *YAWN*. Ok, not the grass that you smoke. What? That picture? I liked the cap the guy is wearing and wanted to get everyone's opinion. Wouldn't it look good on an Asian wearing a speedo and cowboy boots???

So, while you're getting that image out of your head, let me tell you about this new rebate program that Flagstaff is giving residents who pull out their own grass! Supposedly, it's a brilliant new water conservation idea. The scam is like this: go buy a $9 bag of grass seed from Home Depot, seed and nurture your young little seedlings, wait for the grass to grow, pull those evil Walt Whitman menaces from the ground they infest, and get $500. It's that simple. If you own multiple homes or rental properties, bonus! RRrrriiigggghhhtttt. Sounds like the Flagstaff mayor or some city council person planned to landscape their backyard and wanted to find a way to fund the operation.

Santa Cruz River Farmers' Market

2005-08-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Has anyone heard about the Santa Cruz River Farmers' Market??? It's located in the Barrio Hollywood neighborhood at the small park along the north side of Riverside Drive and is every Thursday from 4-7pm. They will be having a grand opening on August 18 (I've never really understood the concept of having a "grand opening" weeks or months after really opening). The only reason Mexilina and I heard about this market was because our favorite coffee shop, Coffee Etc/Old Pueblo Coffee Roasters, has joined the dozens of vendors selling there. Apparently, the SCRFM is sponsored by the Community Food Bank, the Barrio Hollywood, and a few other organizations. It sounds like a pretty hip Market. According to Yvonne, the owner of the Coffee Etc, she says that she thought everyone was wearing Tevas. Didn't that brand of sandals go out of style in the late 1990's? Anywho, I don't know if that's good sign or not, but we'll be there this Thursday to check it out. Maybe I'll wear my own Tevas, just to be nostalgic.

Here is KVOA's article about the SCRFM. Here is a press release by www.barriohollywood.com, the neighborhood website.

The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition (for JM)

2005-08-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

Dude, "Family Edition"? WTF? In the footsteps of Trading Spaces, CBS has decided to make the 8th installment of Amazing Race to include a whole family, and they've called it The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition. Will the network follow previous Amazing Race traditions and include a gay or lesbian family? Sadly, no. But, to appease the LGBT community, they may have a family member that is gay or lesbian. I don't know of any major network that has released a show that actually includes an entire lesbian/gay family, reality tv show or otherwise.

If you want some spoilers for The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition, there have been quite a bit of Phil and racer watchers out there. Here are a couple of forums that have posted actual maps where people have claimed to have seen the teams or crews: here and here. Again, don't click on the link unless you want to see some spoilers of the locations.

So, if you're a fan like J, reserve this date and time for The Amazing Race 8: Family Edition: Tuesday, September 27, 9PM ET/PT. CBS will probably be releasing the contestants names this month or early September, if they follow the same pattern as season 7. (I wonder how long it will take IMDB to post their names). Anywho, as for season 9, the show will go back to the usualy 2-person team format. It's too late to apply, but here a short article about the The Amazing Race 9.

Arizona State Savings and Credit Union members recently Phished

2005-08-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that credit cards and bank accounts are at the top of the list for internet scams, right? Here's an example of what might happen if you don't follow basic internet safety. This is a letter Arizona State Savings and Credit Union sent to all their members immediately after discovering a recent phishing scam:

August 2, 2005 URGENT

Dear Member,

Arizona State Savings & Credit Union has been notified of a potential security breach of member home banking accounts via an internet series of e-mails to some faculty, staff and students connected to a university within the state of Arizona. We are being proactive in notifying all of our Members who use our internet banking service. It is possible that the confidentiality of your account number and debit card has been put at risk if you responded to a fraudulent e-mail request. Here are the details:

* An e-mail message with a fraudulent link to Arizona State Savings & Credit Union was sent to university e-mail boxes requesting account information verification. If you do not have a university e-mail box, that message likely did not reach you. If you received an email from service@azstcu.org, please do not respond to that e-mail. The link in that email would send you to an "illegal website" that does not belong to Arizona State Savings & Credit Union!

* AZSTCU would not ever ask you to verify account information via an e-mail! Please do not ever supply your credit union account information via e-mail!

* If you did respond to the e-mail, and you did input the requested personal and credit union account information, your account may have been compromised.

* For your protection, the AZSTCU home banking website was shutdown temporarily so that we could protect all of our home banking users.
(NOTE: if you have signed up for automatic bill payment or e-statement services, these transactions continued without interruption, though you may not be able to view them, yet, on a temporary basis.)

* If you did respond to the e-mail with personal information, please call our Information Center at 1-800-671-1098 or come to your local branch as soon as possible.

* The intent of the fraudulent email was to access your debit or credit card, so please check for any illegal transactions on your card beginning August 1, 2005.

These extraordinary measures are taken to prevent potential fraud on your account resulting from this potential security breach. We want to assure you that the Credit Union has gone above and beyond normal procedures to make you aware of this activity and that we responded very rapidly, within minutes.

We value your membership and patience, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you.

Sincerely,

Arizona State Savings & Credit Union
Your Financial Partner

In response, the University of Arizona also posted a announcement about the attack, which includes a copy of the press release made by AZSTCU. I am actually very happy that Arizona State Savings and Credit Union was expedient in notifying their customers, unlike another bank I won't mention by name (Bank of America). The credit union also briefly shutdown their online banking access on that same day, presumably to assess the extend of their damage or maybe to prevent this particular phishing attempt from stealing additional customer account information.

My motto for good internet safety is "Don't believe everything you read." In essence, don't believe every email or website that you encounter, even if it looks familiar to you. A little suspicion may protect your financial well-being. In the case of AZSTCU, the phisher sent an email which looked like it was from "server@azstcu.org" (the FROM: field can be forged extremely easily), had setup a website that probably looked like the credit union's official login page (again, this is extremely easy, especially with a little programmer's ingenuity), and even targeted a population of people who would most likely believe it was legitimate (university employees and students who were likely to have been a customer of AZSTCU).

Big deal, right? Yes, it is true that most of us get fraudulent emails every day. I, myself, get more than 100 junk emails a day ranging from buying herbal supplements to sending money to Nigeria. IE 7, Firefox 1.1, and the other browsers will have remedies to help alleviate phishing scams. And, yes, you can even download a plug-in right now for IE and Firefox that helps identify phishing sites (its ability to identify a phishing site depends on whether someone else has encountered the site before you!). But, the fact of the matter is that as smarter technology becomes available to circumvent phishers, phishers develop ways to circumvent the smarter technology, even using this technology as a weakness itself. The whole cyclic dance makes one's head spin faster than you can say Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Ultimately, the most effective weapon against phishers and scammers is plain, old common sense.

Here are some basic tips to bank online:

Be wary of unsolicited email, especially ones that tell you to login using a convenient link in the email. Don't let the "From:" field fool you as this is easily forged.
Always directly go to your banking, credit card, and financial websites! Bookmark or otherwise memorize your banking, credit card, and financial websites. Do not click on banking links provided by an email.
Think before you click the link. Most browsers and email software will display the location of the link if you hover over it, either as a tool tip or in the status bar. Don't click on a link that looks suspicious, including ones whose address is numerical (something like, http://64.29.38.3/login.asp as an example)
Use a pop-up blocker in your web browser. Firefox has it built-in (BTW, have I told you to get Firefox?). IE has it built-in if you're running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Otherwise, use a toolbar that includes it, like the Google Toolbar.
Check for SSL. Before you login, make sure security/ssl is enabled (the little yellow lock in the right-hand corner of the browser). If it doesn't exist, don't login. Also, if you get a warning window that pops up about a problem with the site's certificate, run away. Don't even consider putting your account information there. This should be your mantra for any website that asks you for your personal or financial information -- No SSL, then it's SOL.
Sign Out. Always, always, always sign out of a banking or financial website when you're finished.

If you think you might have been tricked into providing your email, change your password immediately and check your statements often. Also, if you can track down a bank contact to report phishing/online abuse, report the phishing incident immediately so that the bank can take the necessary actions immediately, just like the Arizona State Savings and Credit Union.

Calling all Arizona William Hungs!!!!

2005-08-03T16:46:00.000-07:00

Well, when I read the announcement that American Idol will be holding auditions in Phoenix on August 13, my heart skipped a beat. A vision flashed before my eyes of me singing in front of an audience in a large venue, like the America West Arena. My body was drenched in sweat as I sang into the microphone, spittle spraying with each word. Below, my adoring fans appeared as a large amorphous mass, swaying to the rhythm of my music. Every so often, I could hear the screaming of my name ("Stack0verflow! Stack0verflow!) accompanied by bras and panties being flung onto the stage.

Then, my mind raced to the unabashed William Hung at his audition of American Idol. Doh! Hey, there are some good asian rock singers, but I'm sure they're not going to follow the footsteps of Ricky Martin, and they're definitely not going to follow the unusual fame that Hung did (though if you do a google search for "She Bangs", William Hung's website beats out Ricky Martin). I kinda think that Ricky and William are twins separated at birth. I present to you side-by-side pictures so that you can make your own judgement. For those of you who can say, "I like William Hung" (say that a few times over and over again, slowly), then you already know that he milked his 30-minutes of fame, including making a full-blown music video of his original auditioning song and starred in a few commercials. I just wonder if he actually got hooked up with any of those women that were paid to be in his music video. Any wagers?

But, I digress. I guess my point is that now that I'm married, I can't be a afford to be another William Hung. Mexilina has friends that she has to face, and I want Hooch Boy to grow up without fear of secret video of my audition re-surfacing and ending his successful political career.
So, instead I make a call to anyone else reading this blog to try out for American Idol! Do it! Represent Tucson. Represent Arizona. Be an American -- it's your duty. And, if you're driving through Yuma, try out for the Yuma Idol competition.

In a hurry, be a hacker, try this on a elevator :)

2005-08-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

DEFCON 13 has come and gone, and I missed it again this year (it's a good thing, too. Hooch boy has been sick with pneumonia since Sunday). But, as with any DEFCON, there has been a hacking smorgasborg being published all over the internet.

Well, here's one for all your elevator junkies. Apparently, some elevators have a express-mode button combination, the door close button and the appropriate floor button. Then, enjoy a ride that will be comparable to the carpool lane in heavy traffic. Just don't get pulled over by the motorcycle cop waiting for illegal carpool riders :). Here is the original post.

Bolton humor (or non-humor)

2005-08-03T11:22:00.000-07:00

By Mike Lane

Boy, I must be in the political mood today. I saw this cartoon yesterday and thought it was hilarious. Click on the cartoon to enlarge.

On a related note, NPR had an audio article today that Republican Senator Voinovich, a staunch dissenter to Bolton's nomination and obviously disappointed about the temporary appointment, is sending The Heart and Soul Of Effective Management by James Hind to Bolton. It's basically a WWJD for managers. Seriously though, if a manager were honestly interested in following the principles of WWJD philosophy, I could pick a better book to send.

There's no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.
--John Bolton

Well, if John Bolton puts it that way, may I suggest some other books along those lines:

Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World by Thich Nhat Hanh
Civic Tongue: Political Consequences of Language Choices by Brian Weinsten
Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames by Thich Nhat Hanh

And my favorite, or rather the first book I would have sent if I were Voinovich would be (drum rolls, please):

Getting Anger under Control: Overcoming Unresolved Resentment, Overwhelming Emotions and the Lies behind Anger by Neil Anderson and Rich Miller

Go Mr. Grijalva!

2005-08-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

Colorado River Indian Reservation Boundary Correction Act, sponsored by Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva, was signed into law today! The act restores 15,375 acres of land to the Colorado River tribes that was taken away by President Wilson in 1915. There are, of course, special clauses to the land transfer, but for the most part, the land has been returned to the tribes.

This is indeed a historic event for both the tribes and Congressman Grijalva. Senator Barry Goldwater attempted similar legislation in the early '80s but with no success. Grijalva must have performed some amazing politicking to get this bill passed! The Arizona Republic was the only newspaper with an article about the law. How can the Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star be so lame??

Anyway, my favorite line from the Arizona Republic's article was this:

Bush offered no comment in signing the bill, sponsored by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Interesting. Good work, Congressman Grijalva!

(I read about the news on Google's Personalized Homepage before Mexilina even told me about it :) )

Update 8/4/2005: The press release by the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

Boycott Internet Explorer 7!

2005-08-02T17:36:00.000-07:00

Remember my musings about Internet Explorer and switching over to Mozilla's Firefox? A-ha! Windows IT Pro magazine writer and website "Supersite for Windows" owner Paul Thorrott has drawn a line in the sand and is urging his readers to boycott IE 7, when it comes out. After analyzing IE7 beta, he has come to the conclusion that Microsoft is further distancing itself from web browser standards, meaning that web designers will have to be more careful in developing their web sites. Well, I wish I could say that I was surprised at Microsoft, but I'm not. So, the moral of the story is switch to Mozilla Firefox!

Did I mention that you should switch to Mozilla Firefox?

SPEAK and PETA and Roberta Wright

2005-08-02T11:27:00.000-07:00

Mexilina likes to say, "You have to pick your causes," meaning as much as you want to help every good cause that you can, you should pick the ones that mean the most to you. Some people believe so passionately about one cause that they can dedicate their entire lives to it, and that is Roberta Wright. She has been speaking out and knocking on people's doors in Tucson about animal rights since the 1970's, long before PETA was ever founded. She has lectured at the University of Arizona, was arrested at least a couple times in the past for protesting at places like Wendy's, and founded an organization called SPEAK, Supporting and Promoting Ethics for the Animal Kingdom (website used to exist, but apparently not since December 2001).

Roberta will be protesting in a wire cage dressed in a fur coat on August 13 on the corner of Stone and Pennington (downtown Tucson). I don't know why she chose this corner, but hopefully, it will attract a lot of attention. I know, I know, you've seen one caged woman, you've seen them all. But, you should drive by and honk if you get a chance, just to show solidarity against animal cruelty. It's a joint protest by SPEAK and PETA. Their press release can be found here. Here is an old article by the Tucson Weekly that mentions Roberta Wright; there's a picture of her as well.

That reminds of a Danish co-worker I knew who claimed he used to cage dance for money in Denmark in Techno clubs, but that's a different story...

Current TV - an experiment with TV and Web

2005-08-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

So, you are probably wondering what Al Gore did with his time after the 2000 presidential campaign. Well, he does what any other ex-presidential candidate does: he starts an experimental independent television station where user-uploaded videos are shown around the clock. The name of this new station is Current TV, and it just launched today.

Al Gore is co-founder and chairman of Current TV. He selected David Neuman, a former CNN And Disney executive, as President (Neuman was a Reagan-ite in the '80s), presumeably to provide balance to the programming, though the station is suppose to be apolitical. The interesting part is that according to the New York Times, Current TV funders are "like the campaign finance rolls of Mr. Gore's 2000 campaign".

It looks like Google has a segment called "Google Current", which is shown every hour. Also, viewers will be able to vote on Google for some of the videos that will be shown on Current TV. Unfortunately, for now DirecTV (channel 366) is the only operator in the Tucson area that provides the station. Bastards! For the rest of us, you can only view some of their "featured" uploads on the Current TV site. Hopefully, they'll go the NerdTV route and allow us to download the full content, or at least stream it... :)

Hasselhoff Galore!

2005-08-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

I always find that the web has a funny way of leading me to weird and ~~wonderful~~ weirder places. Tonight was no exception.

Who didn't love Hasselhoff when they were a kid? I sure didn't, but I loved K.I.T.T. Knight Rider rocked! Just like the Original Star Trek series, I cried the day that NBC took the show off the air, and I was forced to watch Knight Rider in syndication to get my artificial intelligent car fantasies satiated.

Hasselhoff, on the other hand, went on to bigger and indeed better things. Now, he is one of the select few celebrities that enjoy international fame for his syndicated shows, everywhere except for the United States. And, he even has a successful music career -- yes, music career. If you really have a Hasselhoff itch, you can still find that he tours Germany.

Anyway, going back to why I'm even talking about David in the first place. I was looking at my technology news, and I somehow encountered this site. Someone for some reason is making a collection of parody posters and video games of Mr. Hasselhoff. Cool. I can't wait to see Resevoir Hoffs and BraveHoff. Don't forget to play a game of Pac-Hoff or Hoff Invaders :).

That is, unless you think David Hasselhoff is the evil...

Is there anything that is NOT hackable?

2005-08-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

The answer is a resounding N-O. This can been seen by sites that strive to hack just about anything (like here and here). I personally admire hacking. For the consumer, hacking is a right that we have under our legal system to modify things that we own, is in the public's interest, or that can be classified as a creative modification to the original item (for copyrighted works, it falls under fair use laws; for inventions, I forget the legal term). Note, I am not a lawyer so this is just my rudimentary understanding of the law, and not a professional opinion.

I would classify this hack as something in the public's best interest; though, I am sure that this would also fall under computer tampering or some other communications legal realm. At DEF CON 13, the annual "underground" hackers' convention in Las Vegas, one hacker, named Adam, demonstrated that the TVs in hotel rooms are easily hacked using a computer and a USB tv tuner. The worst part is that as these hotel tv systems become more interactive, they become easier to hack and will have more personal information that are accessible. Adam demonstrated at the current hotel he was staying he could access or modify the following information using his hack:

Check out other people from their rooms
Setup (unwanted) wakeup times for other people
Access premium channels for free (naughty hacker!)
Get the occupancy rate of the hotel
See snapshots of what other people were watching on their tv at the time
Names of guests
What people were paying for their rooms
Where guests were calling
Etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Well, doesn't that sound like a fun hack?

Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About...(But were afraid to ask)

2005-07-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

This is probably TMI (too much info) for all of you, but here it is! I was reading the local paper this morning, and I found a reference to this link. According to Debbie Kornmiller, www.pretrieve.com will give you public information on any one person, address, phone number, or business in any state. Not only will it give you criminal and other civil court records, but it will also answer such meddling questions such as, "Did Mexilina make any recent political contributions?" and " Are there any US patent records with Mexilina named as an inventor?" Also, if you enter an address, it will tell you comparable real estate sales in that area and local school ratings (as well as a pollution report card). It goes without saying that pretrieve includes such gems as "public access to court info" and "google satellite map" info.

For all of you who know me personally (and who have used my services: "hey, I met this guy...can you find out stuff about him?") you know that I was salivating at the thought of finding out this cornucopia of information! Hey it's good to know (sometimes). Of course, with information comes responsibility. USE THIS WISELY!!

is that iTunes in your pants, or are you just happy to try them on?

2005-07-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

Interesting combination -- iTunes and GAP -- Or, as I like to call the promotion, GapTunes. Apparently, they will be providing little green cards to the customers who try out GAP's new jeans between August 8 - 31. Personally, I am still trying to determine if GAP is an acronym, or if it means something else...

Click here for CNN's Article

System Administrator Appreciation Day

2005-07-29T10:58:00.000-07:00

Yes, thank your System Administrator today; second to Science Fiction Day (Jan 2), it's the only day your SA will be happy :).

Where have all the Good Mexican Restaurants Gone?

2005-07-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

So you'd think, that living in Tucson, there would by a myriad of authentic Mexican restaurants all over town. The sad reality is that only a handful of restaurants are worth going back to, even if only for the salsita (Rigo's) or for their awesome fish tacos during lent (Birrieria Guadalajara, no lie!).

Having been to most of them w/stack0verflow, I stand chasqueada. Yet, there stands a bright jewel (ahem, and that color, also!) in our desert: its name is Lili's Cocina (on South 4th Avenue).

I had gone there a couple of times before, but this time I went with stack0verflow and hooch boy. We, like 40 other people, thought we were smart by going to lunch at 1:00 p.m., thereby avoiding the lunch rush. Right. Fortunately, we were able to find a nice table, with a high chair to boot.

The attraction to this restaurant is the sopita they serve with their daily special. This day, it was Caldo de Queso. Mmm yummy, but doh! too spicy for a hooch boy, who preferred to eat chile verde, rice and beans (he's a growing boy!).

All in all, I am very happy with this restaurant. The service was great, the food is authentic, and did I mention the group of nanas cooking it up in the kitchen? I love it! It's pretty close to my Mami Chayo's style of cooking (except for their salsita). Overall, give Lili's Cocina 4 hooches out of 5.

What's wrong with this picture?

2005-07-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

Before you click on the link below, can you determine what's wrong with the picture (provided by AP and Reuters of Bush watching the shuttle launch)?

Original link by Engadget.

IE hair-pulling day, This site is Firefox-friendly!!!!

2005-07-28T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, Manny was nice enough to let me know that our blog is hosed in Internet Explorer (even though he does like to post random comments to harass Mexilina and me, which we delete the most egregious of them :) ). In any case, I would like to submit to our blog readers to switch to Firefox! Please, help the world lessen the grip of Microsoft by using alternative software, which is both free and, quite frankly, better developed.

Firefox is such a piece of software. You can do so many things with Firefox, including getting RSS feeds, tabbed browsing, get the local weather within the browser, as well as a whole slew of features. Admittedly, there are a lot of websites that are strictly IE-friendly, but those website/applications are becoming fewer by the day. Microsoft is a monopoly in many aspects regardless of how well its army of lawyers argue the contrary in legal realms.

You can download it by clicking on the "Get Firefox" icon above. If you ask, I will even come to your home or office and install it for you, just to get you to use it (That's how irked I am at IE). You can even leave IE installed on your computer for those sites that have decided to limit the options for the rest of us -- I, too, have IE installed on my computers for those unfortunate occasions.

Update: Manny also hinted at the overflow bug that IE has (Thanks, Manny). Our blog should now work in IE, though my offer still stands to help you get Firefox installed :).

Extra! Extra! Tucson Citizen's Dining Guide

2005-07-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Tucson Citizen just released their online "The Tucson Dining Guide". It's a no-frills restaurant search, a simple one-click recommendation, and a customer review feature. You can also search by area of town and by cuisine. I think it's great that the Tucson Citizen started this section considering that it gives us options besides citysearch.com and the Tucson Weekly. If you know of other review sites that have significant content (e.g don't say Zagats as it only has 20 Tucson restaurants), please list them in the comments.

Yuma and its dying mall

2005-07-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is for all the Yuma residents(Arizona, not Colorado). So, the Yuma Daily Sun put out their "Comings and Goings" a couple of days ago. The article lists the usual business thoroughfare, but what I really thought was funny was this line:

Things are not looking good for tenants of Southgate Mall.

Um, hello! Things were never good for the tenants of the "Southgate Hall" since the late 1980's! Also in the article Ms. Lobeck, the writer, rumored that Target is closing its doors when the new one opens in the new "Open Air" mall; She then quotes the Ark Christian Bookstore owner as having a 90% -- yes, 90% -- loss since the same time last year, cites other stores losing 40-60%, and says that Sears won't quote any future plans for its residence at the mall. Gee, I wonder why. Sears wouldn't dare think about moving from that place

Here's the thing: Why don't the current owners, Simon Corp., tear down the mall and build a better one in its place? They could buy up that area where Mervyns and Target is as well as any of the other sides. Then they can build something really big. Heck, Simon Corp could even build a big sky bridge connecting the sections that are separated by road, or not. A better idea would be to make the Southgate Mall into an outlet mall, just like the dozens Simon Corp already owns. Whatever the case, Yuma has the potential to be a large money making venture for someone or some company to invest there. Just take a look at the home building explosion within the last 10 years. Oh well, maybe someone will buy the mall (if it hasn't already been done) for the $9 million Simon Corp asked for in May. Could someone take pictures or video when they tear the place down??

E85 - if you can

2005-07-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

KVOA Eyewitness News at noon had an article about the Catalina Mart at Ruthrauff having an E85 pump. Essentially, E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% gas and is suppose to burn cleaner than gas. You can also save around 50-60 cents/gallon with E85.

"Wow", you say. "I'll drive down there right now!" you declare. To you, I will say, "Hold your gas cap." As you guessed, it's not as easy as it sounds. Only a handful of cars actually support it. The selection of cars that do support E85 are an interesting mix. For example, the 2000 and 2001 Isuzu Hombre. Why? I do not know. GM, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler appears to have the most number of cars that support the fuel.

If you want to see if you have a car that support it, head down to http://www.e85fuel.com. You can also see what other locations have the E85 fuel nationwide. In Tucson the only other place is Arizona Petroleum.

Personally, E85 isn't efficient enough. Mexilina's and my next car will be either hydrogen-powered, electric, or a Toyota Prius hybrid with the latest mods :).

50 Best Mobile Games of All Time

2005-07-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Mobile Magazine has this list of the 50 best mobile video games of all time. Can you guess what is number one? Tetris on the GameBoy. Duh! Well, I counted at least 9 games that I have either played or owned. We even own a Simon that still works.

Amazon Yellow Pages? Where did this come from?

2005-07-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

As you can guess, I'm a big fan of testing new technology. I especially love testing out new searches, particularly when it makes my life a little easier to find information quickly and intuitively. So, through some obscure way, I ended up at Amazon's Yellow Pages (to be honest, I stumbed upon Amazon's A9 service, which led me to there). Yes, Amazon is getting into the realm of business directories.

Ho hum. You can probably find dozens of yellow page directories out there, including the Yahoo! Yellow Pages, which I was using almost exclusively -- until now. Hello, directory! Not only can you look up businesses and their map locations, but you can also:

see what businesses are located along the same street of another business
see pictures that people have uploaded of the business or street
see the businesses' payment options (visa, mastercard, etc)
and, finally (the wow feature...drum rolls please), you can have amazon call the business at the click on a hyperlink. They use this eStara's technology to call you first and then the business. On the one call I tried it on, it actually worked!

Ok, so you might think that the click to call is a bit gimmicky, but it does save me the hassle of having to type the number by hand :).

The downside is that the service, like the A9 search, is still in beta. As such, only a few businesses or streets have pictures associated with them. Also, When I searched for my favorite coffee shop, Coffee Etc/Old Pueblo Coffee Roasters, it returned the old, old, old Coffee Etc on Cambell and Glenn (remember that one???). Well, at least, someone had uploaded some good pictures of that strip mall that the old, old, old Coffee Etc used to live.

Also, I was bit disappointed that I couldn't leave recommendations for a business. Um, hello, wasn't that one of the primary features that made Amazon so famous, the fact that you could read the recommendations by other customers or even post one yourself??? Well, it is beta after all, and maybe they'll add it later.

Hopefully, Yahoo! Yellow Pages will get its act straight (its service hasn't changed in years) and take a clue from Amazon. Otherwise, I'm using Amazon's Yellow Pages from now on.

Piracy makes the world go 'round

2005-07-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

So, here's a fun one. Microsoft announced today that in order to download updates from their website, Microsoft will check your computer to determine if it has a valid Windows XP installation. Before today, it was option on some software downloads from MS. Now, the check is required, which installs a tiny program on your computer to send the "relevant" license information back to Microsoft. It also sounds like it might be checking some of the Office applications as well.

I wonder how long it will be before the crackers will be able to bypass this goodie. Never underestimate human determination to get things for free...

Here are the original news articles from Yahoo and Techworld.

Stealth: Is that the Movie, or the Plot?

2005-07-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

We were treated tonight to a sneak preview of Stealth, opening on Friday (thanks, Ashley!), and decided to do a joint movie review. Let’s see how this works.

MEXILINA: Not having seen too many previews of this film, I wasn’t sure what to expect. A brief summary of the film from IMDB states: “In the near future, the Navy develops a fighter jet piloted by an artificial intelligence computer…but when the computer develops a mind of its own, it's the humans who are charged with stopping it before it incites a war...” Ahem. Um, ok. It’s more like, “Three top pilots (Josh Lucas as Ben, Jessica Biel as Kara, and Jamie Foxx as Henry) struggle with technology and find love after intense crises and twists and turns and lots and lots of different plots…and, then, technology is aaiight, after all (but only when it emulates humans).”

STACK0VERFLOW: When I first saw the television trailers for Stealth, I thought of the 1982 movie Firefox with Clint Eastwood stealing a highly advanced stealth fighter from the country formerly called the Soviet Union. Being a rugrat at the time, I thought the movie was awe-inspiring with the fast paced flybys and large Hollywood explosions. After a couple of decades and viewing hundreds of movies, my action movie tastes have are a bit more refined. Within the first 15 minutes, I thought I was watching Top Gun. By the end of the movie, I thought the franken-plot was reminiscent of Short Circuit, Flight of the Navigator, War Games… AND Top Gun. Maybe there was another plot squeezed in there. Did I miss any?

MEXILINA: Hello! Total Top Gun. I was expecting Kenny Loggins to pop out with the guitar solo at any moment. Of course, when you say “plot”, I’m sure you mean “plots”. They morphed so many times that I wasn’t sure who the bad guy was at any given moment. The acting, or should I say, lack thereof… oh yeah, totally Top Gun, with the big exception that Top Gun had good romantic scenes (“Tell me about your fah-tha”) and this movie had a lame “I have a foster mother for every situation.”

STACK0VERFLOW: You forgot to mention the “token” brown person. Henry had more personality than the other main characters and, yet, you can probably guess what happens to him. And, Joe Morton (Terminator 2) as Capt. Marshfield was also an excellent actor... but also in a minor supporting role.

MEXILINA: Oh yeah, Jamie Foxx was totally underutilized, ‘cause that man is Funny. Best line in the movie, Henry saying he’s been told he’s an EDI (sorry, you have to watch the movie to get it). You want to talk stereotypes? How about the Thai girl (who was so horny she love Jamie Foxx a…short time)? And how about the techie inventor of the EDI? How many nerds do you know that spend their free time discussing quantum physics with their friends over transparent scratch pads?

STACK0VERFLOW: Wait, let me get my transparent scratch pad… Ah, here it is. Being a sci-fi fan, I did appreciate how Rob Cohen, the director, incorporated the near-future technology into the movie. For one, the aircraft designs are all very real, with the EDI’s design looking somewhat similar to the Boeing X-32 Joint Strike Fighter. The Talons with its inverted wing shape also very familiar. Other cool techie-gasms were the wearable displays and verbal command systems.

MEXILINA: To be fair, this movie was full of action. Or, as Josie describes it, it was “loud.” For all its two hours, though, it was jam-packed w/action goodness. I actually closed my eyes at one point (not because of the billions of wasted taxpayer money, but because I was getting dizzy). All in all, if you liked Top Gun (and we all did in the 80’s, admit it), then you’ll like this movie. I give it 3 Hooches out of 5.

STACK0VERFLOW: Actually, all the _women_ loved Top Gun in the ‘80’s :). Personally speaking, I find the archetypal self-aware, naïve computer plot a little overdone (ala War Games). Coupled with a hodge podge of plots and the unsatisfactory ending, I can’t help but feel that W.D Richter, writer for Big Trouble in Little China, could have written something better but was somehow forced into a less than perfect storyline. Despite my disappointments, I was somewhat entertained as action movies go, but I would watch it in the theater if only for its fast paced flybys and large Hollywood explosions. I give it a 2.5 Hooches out of 5. For its cool technology, I give it 3 techie-gasms out of 5.

Correction by STACK0VERFLOW: I want to make a correction to my comment about the plane designs. After closer examination, I think the EDI looks more like the Boeing X-45 with a curved frame. The Talons look like a sleeker Grumman X-29 with twin fins.

Addition: How funny. It looks like there are quite a few people who wondered why Foxx even did this movie. Here's a blog entry I read by a Comic-con attendee during some Q/A session. Scroll down until you see the picture of Cohen and Fox. The writer says in the paragraph after it:

The best moment, though, was when someone asked Foxx why he'd chosen to go from a great film like Ray to "a movie like this." Everyone on stage looked incredibly uncomfortable, while everyone in the audience snorted with laughter, because that was totally what we were all wondering, but didn't think anyone would have the audacity to actually say out loud in front of the director.

MSN's Virtual Earth

2005-07-25T11:53:00.000-07:00

I can always tell when someone feels threatened by another, and I always find it funny to see what they do to compensate. Why did I bring that up? No reason whatsoever.

So, MSN has just released its Virtual Earth beta. At first glance, all I can say is that it's alright. Some of the features they provide are switching between a "road map" and an "aerial photo" view, a scratch pad utility (after using it, I indeed scratched -- my head), and a way that they can locate you from your computer, either by using your ip address (there are already sites that provide ip location services as well, like here, here, and here) or by downloading MSN's proprietary software (which I wouldn't even touch with a laser pointer). The one interesting item I did notice is that their maximum zoom appears to be more detailed than someone else's.

Would I use MSN Virtual Earth for mapping? Not really. I guess I'll wait to see what they produce after the beta period ends...

Update: I guess Microsoft bought the domain name http://www.virtualearth.com for their new map.

Update #2: This is a real hoot. Microsoft is always the jokester. Apparently, the Register is reporting that in Microsoft's world, Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, CA doesn't exist yet. Click here to see how historical activism really works. :):)

What's in a name?

2005-07-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

"My Co-signer" -- That's the name that Chuck, a car dealer in Florida, calls his new payment companion, and rightly so. Officially, it's called "On Time", and it's a device by Payment Protection Systems that encourages on-time car payments. The original article can be found here.

This is how the delinquency deterrent works: Starting on the third day before the payment is due and each day thereafter, a number will flash indicating how many days before the car will be disabled. 24 hours before D-day, the device will also emit a very annoying beeping sound. Then, on the final day, don't shut off your car. If you do, nada, nothing. Start exercising your thumb or break out with the bus fare.

Payment Protection Systems claims that for dealers using "On Time", repossessions drop from 27% to 5%. Wow. Are people really that lazy?? Either that, or they just can't stand the beeping that they'll mortgage the home to make it stop :). Personally, I can deal with beeping (as can be evidenced by the fact that I'll sleep through my alarm clock if it suits me), but just don't make me listen Britney Spears for a whole day. Please, anything but Britney.

Holy Legos, Batman!

2005-07-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

So, I received my usual morning "spam from fam" email from my mother -- you know what I mean, the jokes, the chain letters indicating that you need to send this email to 50 people with an hour of receiving the message or else you won't win the next lottery, and of course, the "must see" email. This morning's "spam from fam" was of the latter group, the "must see" email.

In the message, amongst the entire list of all the 20-30 people who had forwarded the message, was a set of pictures of what appeared to be an intricate church that a religious person had made completely from legos. Being a lego lover (no, I do not make love to legos -- har har), I had to track down the pictures to see if this really existed. Surely, if such a lego beast existed, he or she would have wanted to post the feat on a web page. And, sure enough, the very first listing on Google was Amy Hughes' (don't know if that's her real name) homepage of the Abston Church of Christ, a dedication to her former cat, Precious. If you read the FAQ, Abston is not a real town or church, but it is named after the plastic that Lego's are made from, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS). Amazing detail, don't you think?

Be a AZ Hooch! Link to Us!

2005-07-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

Link to us and be an Arizona Hooch by including the following image to your blog or your website:

To do so, add the following code to the template of your blog or the html of your website:


<a href="http://azhoochness.blogspot.com/">
<img src="http://www.doralina.com/icons/azhoochness_logo.png"
height="18" width="80" />
</a>

Google Maps just got better!!!

2005-07-23T10:48:00.000-07:00

Google is just amazing! Googleblog just announced that they have integrated their virtual and satellite maps!!! Check it out.

Oh. My. Those Brits. That Greenpeace.

2005-07-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, I love a good political commercial that's creative and pauses one to think. Don't you? Well, all I'm going to say is that there shouldn't be any children watching this commercial by Greenpeace UK about Bush/Blair relationship -- if you want to call it that :). I can't believe this is something that is actually advertised on a television (and, not because of the political commentary).

Click here to see what I mean (seriously, it's not for kids).

Civil Liberties? That's so yester-year.

2005-07-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I wish I could say that the US is evolving into a society in which we could be proud of our government and its policy makers as a whole. Anyway, I'm sure we'll hear more about this in the news outlets and in the political commentaries in the days and weeks to come. For Arizonans, below is a breakdown of who voted for the wretched extension and the increase of powers as provided by the Patriot Act (H.R. 3199). Most of the Patriot Act was made permanent while "roving wiretaps" (read: wiretapping without a named warrant) and library/medical records searches were given 10-year extensions. As usual, this extension was expected to pass along party lines, with a few exceptions.

The Noes (All Democrats):

Ed Pastor (CD4)
Raúl M. Grijalva (CD7) -- yeah!

The Ayes (All Republicans...):

Rick Renzi (CD1)
Trent Franks (CD2)
John Shadegg (CD3)
JD Hayworth (CD5)
Jeff Flake (CD6)
Jim Kolbe (CD8)

As a point of clarification, I do believe law enforcement should have the ability to execute certain powers in order to enforce laws and protect its citizens. However, there should always be checks and balances and due process in those powers -- and it is in these areas that aspects of the Patriot Act reduces.

"My buddy, my buddy, wherever I go, he goes!"

2005-07-22T16:15:00.000-07:00

Speaking of buddies, I guess AOL has this new fancy-smancy calculator that will determine how popular you are, based on your buddy list and the concept of "degrees of separation" (3 degrees to be precise). MSNBC online has an article on it. AOL calls the site aimfight. If you want to compare your AIM account to mine, it's stag775. Let's get ready to rumble!

The next version of Windows after XP

2005-07-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

Well, well, the next Microsoft OS version after Windows XP has finally received an official product name last night: Windows Vista. Remember the hoopla when Windows XP was named? The M$ marketing folk said that XP stood for "eXPeriences" because Windows XP would bundle experiences. Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! (sorry, I had to let it out). I read somewhere that XP stood for Xtra Problems :). Well, in all honestly, I do think that Windows XP did improve on the previous versions, like Windows ME, and especially in the networking realm (though as an OS it was still not in the same league as Linux).

It looks as though they have a snazzy tagline for the long-awaited beast: "Bringing Clarity to the World." Like other vistas, I hope it will be a beautiful one -- and not the blue screen of death.

Craigslist Tucson Posting of the Day

2005-07-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you read Tucson Craig's List, but Mexilina and I read it fairly often. It's a popular no-frills online classified ads and announcement board that has been free from its inception. The site actually started because a San Francisco computer programmer wanted some way so that he and his friends could announce local events and list stuff they were selling to each other. Now, it's one of the most popular classified ad sites with sections for many major cities.

I used to read it all the time when I lived in NorCal. When I moved to Tucson, I was going through withdrawals since they didn't have a Tucson section yet. That all changed last October/November! Anyway, Mexilina likes to read the best-of-craigslist. And, I like to see what's for sale and read the "Rants and Raves" section.

Today, while reading the "For Sale" section, I came across this post. To summarize, some guy who lives near Highland and Broadway is giving away a fridge for free that "works 80% of the time." Huh? How does he know it works 80% of the time? Is he sure it's not 75% of the time? Funny guy. Needless to say, anything worth putting into a refrigerator probably needs cooling 100% of the time, especially in this weather -- even if the refrigerator is for free. Good lucky, buddy!

On the way back...

2005-07-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

The camera phone doesn't do the monsoon sky justice.

A quick splash

2005-07-21T14:51:00.000-07:00

Just outside Lucky's Chinese Food. I made it here before I could be soaked-soaked :).

A Mirror is not just for reflecting

2005-07-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

So, remember my diatribe on RFID, security, and convenience? Well, here are a couple more examples of what I mean: Mirrors. Today, mirrors are useful for reminding me when I need a hair cut. Tomorrow, mirrors will be able to do so much more -- for other people.

In one case, we have this one mirror whose description seems to indicate that this is a really cool television -- then read the Q & A on the same page. Amongst its wonderful tv broadcasting capabilities is "remote site observation, digital video recording, alarm monitoring..." Maybe then I can get a second opinion of when I need a haircut, eh?

In the other case, Hitachi has developed this admittedly cool mirror that will conveniently detect what RFID chips you're wearing and display content accordingly (read: advertising and rocky road ice cream). Here are related commentaries by Engadget and UBIKS.

It is what it is / Lo que es, es..

2005-07-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

"What Is that?" an irritated doctor (who looked young enough to, ah, have gone to high school with me) asked me this morning. "Um... I bite my nails..." I sheepishly responded. I quickly déjà vu'ed to several years ago, when another doctor (from the year of the caldo, and just as spicy) asked me haughtily, "What is This?" as he lifted my organically trimmed hand.

I think I'm just naturally nervous at doctor's offices, and am suspicious of every question I am asked. Do you blame me? My first doctor's experience went like this: I was six, and had decided that skating through the dining room on a newly-waxed floor, holding a glass of lemonade was a good idea. Naturally, it was fate that glass and floor would meet, slicing my wrist in the process. Of course, that's not the problem: it was the doctor's question "¿Que es esto?" the moment he saw my flourescent orange net stockings with the 2 feet of extra hose hanging from my toes (Hey! I couldn't find some socks, my oldest sister had some stockings, it seemed like a good idea at the time).

It all pretty much went downhill from there. From my very muscular, young gynecologist (of whom I always say, "I just wish he could see me with my clothes on, just Once!") to the doctor who came into my hospital room after hoochie's birth ("Hi, my name is Dr. K. Can you go ahead and lift the covers so I can look in there?") Um.. yes, but.. shouldn't you buy me drinks first?

At least he didn't say, "Hi, my name is Dr. K... WHAT IS THAT?"

The Cow, The Moon -- now the cow can map it instead of jump it.

2005-07-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Can you believe Google? They recently launched Google Moon, which is functionally very similar to Google Maps. Now I can map the best route between the crater Ptolemaeus and the crater Alphonsus.

What will Google think of next???? They are my idols, my heros. I want to work at Google -- I want to BE Google.

Update: Google Moon appears to be incomplete (meaning, you can't see the entire surface). But, it's still cool nevertheless.

Update #2: Mexilina pointed out something very interesting :). It may be proof that the US Moon Landing was indeed staged afterall. Just zoom the moon map to the highest bar, and you'll see what she found out...

Scotty was finally "Beamed Up" :(

2005-07-20T11:08:00.000-07:00

How sad. James Doohan died of pneumonia and had Alzheimer's disease. For you non-trekkies, he was on the cast of the original Star Trek series. Funny how I can feel sad for someone that I've never met or never known. It's still sad :(.

In the name of security and convenience

2005-07-19T22:47:00.000-07:00

Mexilina and I often talk about how many of today's innovations are driven by laziness and convenience, whether the convenience "benefits" an individual or a group of people. Most innovations are mundane and have no net effect on society other than give us something to gawk at or be dazzled (e.g Roomba, Clorox Toilette Wand System). However, there are those innovations that will have a drastic effect on the way we life. If left unchecked, these "advancements" will cost our society more than they may be worth. Don't get me wrong. We both love technology (ok, me more so than her), and we both have our lazy days. But, sometimes, I think that buying our own mountainside or island and shedding this crazy, digital society is the way to go (Now, if only I can win that Powerball...).

Government and big business understand this need to achieve absolute convenience. On one hand, we have government scaring us into allowing them to catalog, digitize us, and store every aspect of our lives into a large distributed database; then, they tell us that we can travel more smoothly, safely, and conveniently if we agree to have more of our lives cataloged, digitized, and stored. And, we all know that government-used databases are secure.

On the other hand, we have big business trying to sell us on the idea that they can deliver us the services and products that we want, if only they can record all our idiosyncrasies and preferences. They use "intelligent agents" to determine that whenever I buy a Colgate toothbrush and diapers, I'm more likely to buy Dreyers rocky road ice cream. Then, they print me out a coupon for the ice cream at the checkout counter, even though I've never tasted rocky road ice cream in my life, and it doesn't look appetizing to me to try it.

It seems to me that the more society achieves convenience, the more we lose on privacy and ironically, security. The sadder part is that there seems to be no end in sight to what government and big business will do to help us achieve convenience. The latest innovation that will drastically change the way we, as individuals, will identify (or be identified by) society is the RFID. Generally speaking, RFID uses a microchip and antenna to tag things or people. Some RFID chips will contain simply a unique identifier, but more complex RFID chips could contain complex information like health data, contact information, etc. As for "micro", I have seen prototype RFID chips that are as small as a grain of rice. Because of today's manufacturing efficiencies, companies are projecting a cost of a few cents for one RFID chip. Image a world where literally everything from your socks to the apple you eat will have an RFID chip embedded.

Some people are jumping on the bandwagon to demonstrate that RFID is "harmless." Sure, I don't mind eating something the size of a grain of rice, but what I don't like is something that might be transmitting my location or even an identifying number where ever I go -- and, not being able to turn it off! It'll be like tattooing my social security on my forehead with a homing beacon that says "HERE I AM" every second.

Anyway, I'll close it up as I need to get to bed. Some of you may already know that many pets have been given the chips by their owners for several years now. Last year, Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha implanted himself with an RFID chip as well as at least 18 other government workers. There's already talk about RFID tagging prison inmates and ex-convicts. Now, in the latest news, Tommy Thompson, Bush's former HHS Secretary, has announced will implant himself with one of these miracle chips. Whoopee. I would bank money that his chip probably contains garbage data or probably isn't even associated with any real database. But, hey, we always need brave volunteers venture into the "Brave New World" or "1984" or even the "Brave 1984 New World".

Mary's Lucky Dollar for breakfast

2005-07-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

Mexilina and I had machaca burrito plates from Mary's Lucky Dollar. It's located just south of the Southside Presbyterian Church on 10th Avenue. The owner (Mary??) is the nicest person in South Tucson -- the city's mayor (South Tucson's, that is) could learn a lesson or two from her :). Most importantly, the price is as good as the food (we ate for $5.50 for the both of us). Delicious!

[Note: This picture was taken by my Treo and uploaded via Sprint and Blogger's moblogging service (moblog = mobile blogging).]

It's about a mile, er.. or two inches away

2005-07-18T19:42:00.000-07:00

I have a wonderful brother-in-law. He's friendly, intelligent, outgoing, and a total sweetheart (in a teddy bear kind of way). He does, although, have an interesting take on "diagnoses." Some examples:

Me: What's wrong with the car, Mike?
Mike: Well, it could be a spark plug, or it could actually be that the whole engine needs to be replaced..
Me: How far away is that store from here?
Mike: It depends... if you take the freeway, you'll get there in about 5 min. Of course, with the traffic, it could take about 2 hours..
Me: Hey Mike, I have this spot on my leg..
Mike: Oh, don't worry, it's probably an allergic reaction...But you know what, you need to get that looked at, because it could be skin cancer...

Did I mention he's a nurse? I didn't see the connection until Hooch Boy was hospitalized as a preemie. It was Impossible to get any kind of concrete answer out of the nurses and doctors.

Me: What's that on the x-ray of his stomach?
Dr: Oh, those we call "valleys and hills." Hmm.. Of course, that could also be Necrotizing Enterocolitis..

Well, it turned out to be valleys and hills, whatever that's supposed to be- but it sure sounded better than the alternative! Which brings me to a website Mike suggested: WebMD. According to him, you can just "type in your symptoms" and it will give you a "diagnosis."

In the interest of science, I decided to give it a try. Hmm.. as to be expected: I may have a small infection in my joints......Or I may need a total joint replacement due to Paget's disease.

How cheap is a cheap computer?

2005-07-18T15:47:00.000-07:00

Being a person with a propensity to build my computer instead of buying it outright, I often get asked whether one should buy or build. In some occasions, I even get asked whether I could build one for someone. Just because I build my own doesn't mean that I would recommend that another individual or organization should do the same as well. On other occasions, I am asked to compare whether computer A is a better deal than computer B. Regardless, I usually respond with an "it depends on your situation". I'm not being facetious or difficult. The fact of the matter is that everyone has different needs and uses for their digital appliance.

Sure, most of us want the best technology we can get for our budget. But, the practically speaking, we should be getting what is needed for our budget, not just the best technology. For example, if I'm looking for a new system for my personal use for downloading music, editing photographs and videos, and playing the latest video games -- all on a daily basis --, then my needs will probably be greater the average office user (and hopefully, so will my budget).

But, let's say that I am purchasing for an organization that is budget-minded (as almost all are), is purchasing the cheapest system that can be bought, and is only using the computer for office applications, then I would probably urge them to buy a basic computer with no frills. Some people may argue that "basic computer with no frills" is the devil in the details. To make matters worse, the decision making criteria to purchase a laptop is slightly different than purchasing a desktop. Let me share with you some very basic criteria that I use to determine what accessories or specifications I use for the budget computer:

The processor or CPU. This is probably the most difficult aspect to decide upon, particularly because there are so many models out there. With only two processor manufacturers (Intel and AMD), you'd think that the selection would be easy. Well, buddy, you were wrong! On the budget system, you will probably see an AMD Sempron or an Intel Celeron processor. If price is negligible, go for the Semprons.
Operating System. If you're really on budget, you can always go Linux :). For many people, the choice will probably be between Windows XP Home or Windows XP Professional which will probably be a cost difference of at least $120. If your budget can afford it, go for Windows XP Professional, especially in an office setting.
RAM. On the budget systems, almost all manufacturers will include only 256MB. This is the dirt minimum one can squeak by using Windows XP. On Microsoft's website, they list 128MB as minimum, but most technically knowledgeable people know that's a joke. I recommend getting at least 512MB, even if it means getting it after purchasing the computer. If the cost difference between 256MB RAM and 512MB RAM is the difference between being able to buy the system now and not buying it at all, 256MB should be fine -- just save up for the upgrade later.
Hard Drive. For most budget computers, 40GB should be fine if that is what a special offers.
Optical Drive. By this I mean, the CD-ROM,DVD-ROM,CD-RW,etc. Unless you really need a DVD-ROM (for watching DVD movies or reading data on DVD discs), I would just skip it. Same goes for the CD writing capabilities. If necessary, you can by a $27 CD-RW at a later time.
Display. If you look hard enough, you can find specials where a CRT or LCD monitor is included. Again, if the price is negligible, I would go for the LCD, unless you're doing a lot of digital graphics or photo editing (LCD's are notorious for the lack of color matching).
Floppy drive. Skip it. Buy yourself a USB thumb drive instead.
Modem. Obviously, if you need to dial-up into your ISP, get one. Otherwise, just skip it.
Printer. There are specials from time to time that include free printers. In general, it's a good deal so that you don't have to share a workgroup printer.
Graphics card. For the budget/office computer, this is not _that_ important.
Warranty. IMPORTANT! If you're going to buy from a manufacturer, read the warranty. It might be worth dropping down some more cash, if it means a decent warranty. Since we're talking budget computer, for warranty I probably wouldn't spend more than 15-20% of the computer costs and definitely not more than 2 years. Again, it all depends on your situation and budget.

Anyway, there are a lot of disclaimers. For example, as can be implied, these considerations are very, very generalized. Also, when comparing two computers, you would obviously compare each individual part and determine how important each one is to your needs. For example, let's say computer deal A includes a 15" CRT Monitor, an DVD/CD-RW, speakers, but no printer, but computer deal B includes an 15" LCD, a CD-ROM, a printer, but no speakers. All things being equal and for a basic office setting, I would probably select computer deal B since 1) it has an LCD (hello! desktop real estate!), 2) the free printer is a nice bonus, and 3) I can always buy a CD-RW at a later time and probably for cheaper, than say buying a LCD monitor to upgrade the CRT. As for the speakers, who cares? Get headphones.

Well, this is just my take on budget computers. As I said before, it depends on your situation. :).

"Fingerprints, please!"

2005-07-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been to Disney World in 20 years (seriously) and I haven't been to Disneyland in over 10 years. But, I can't believe Disney and the other amusement parks need fingerprints, just to get admission! What's next? Implanted RFID? That's probably not too far from the truth, and they'll probably say that it is to provide "better service." Read the original news article.

Today's NPR "This I Believe" essay

2005-07-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

I love NPR! I especially enjoy some of their special series like the StoryCorps Oral History Project. Another such series is the This I Believe audio essays, which is a revival of the 1950's radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow.

Today's essay, "Mysterious Connections that Link Us Together" written a Azar Nafisi, an Iranian writer and teacher, was very compelling, particularly when she read the essay in her own words. Her first sentence is "I believe in empathy." For a short essay, she does an excellent job of conveying the importance of empathy in her work, life, and the world in general.

Empathy is a word that has a very simple meaning, but one that can be very difficult for most people to achieve in their own lives.

I hope NPR maintains their quality of service, journalism and non-partisan news broadcasts, in light of the fact that Patricia de Stacy Harrison will now be president of the CPB. Harrison was co-chair of the Republican National Committee and is currently working in the State Department as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs, basically the marketing department for the current administration's policies and agenda. Somehow, I fear that the future of NPR and PBS will be changed for the worse...

Archaeologists will call the beginning of the 21st century "The Age of Exhibitionism"

2005-07-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

Can you tell which one is mine?

Who would have thought Bush could use IM?

2005-07-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

I'm not an Arianna Huffington fan, but from time to time I like to drift over to her celebrity blog to see who's writing. Anywho, there's this funny IM screen capture :) between Bush and Blair, provided to us by Danielle Crittenden, a conservative author -- definitely not a fan of her, but hey, it's funny stuff. I wonder if the feds are going require her to reveal her source, too. Betcha it was good ol' Karl.

im conversation #1
im conversation #2 (the funnier one)

Here's an except from #2:

kickass43: like u brits can drink. u r all drunken sods
sxybritguy10: needed it
kickass43: so did I dude
kickass43: odouls doesn’t do it for a summit
kickass43: could use a stiff one now
sxybritguy10: u r in trouble man
kickass43: rove stuff sux
kickass43: can’t play the game with no quarterback
sxybrityguy10: bad rap
sxybritguy10: at least u still got condi
kickass43: she’s so hot
sxybritguy10: way hot
kickass43: remember her in germany
kickass43: the domantrix boots
sxybritguy10: smokin
...

Hilarious!

Ay, Sopita No Te Rajes!

2005-07-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

I had a most bizarre dream last night, full of suspense and excitement...then I woke up. Doh! And now the moment is gone; of course I don't remember anything at all, lest for gatita and bucky-g jumping all over the bed and meowing.

After having feverish nightmares for 3 nights in a row, I am finally (semi) healthy! And I did learn several rules for staying home sick:

1. Don't psychoanalyze the Talk Shows: Why, oh why did she tell her husband that she slept with 26 men? Is a man really "macho" if he sleeps with a transvestite? What kind of man tells his fiancee that her mother pays him for sex? Who's the real baby "daddy"? Who cares! It just really does add way too much "dumb" space to your medial temporal lobe.

2. Sleep. You need it. Your gmail can and will wait.

3. Enjoy the pampering from your loved ones: Be appreciative of the love they show you, even if it's a hooch boy jumping on you to give you a good morning hug (oww! my aching muscles) or the incessant "Drink More Water!" to keep you from being hydrated. It's true what RG says, "It's all about the love!" (it is, it really is!).

4. If your hubby makes you soup, brag about it. Is that great or what? My husband, the alta cocina chef. Mmm.. I was very impressed. I credit that soup for healing me. Um, sorry no link -- he concocted the elixir all by himself.

Potty training tips

2005-07-15T10:23:00.000-07:00

So, Mexilina and I are trying to figure out how to potty train our son. We've heard countless tips, and read a few articles, but as they say every person -- and hooch -- is different. K suggested that we put a Cheerio into the toilette bowl and have Hooch practice dunking it. Of course, I thought it was the most insane thing to teach a 2-year old, but after finding this urinal, it all seems clear to me now.

Credit Agency Identity Theft

2005-07-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Don't forget to get your free credit reports -- from all three credit agencies, and stagger the request so that you receive one each year. CNet has an article that describes a growing epidemic of imposter sites that try to trick you into thinking they are the legitimate free credit report site. Apparently, there are more than 120 of these sites that try to muddy the water, especially if you enter the wrong search terms into google.

Personally, the government should have sponsored the site, using a .gov extension. It would be more difficult to imposter that address. But, as it stands, you either have to know the address, trust the source you're getting the address from, or my method is search the ftc.gov site for the true address. In your case, you can just trust me -- don't forget to email me your ssn and birthday so I can verify that you're serious about getting your free credit report.

Best pest control company in Tucson, Arizona

2005-07-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Mexilina and I live in a house in the outskirts of Tucson. It's definitely nice to have one's backyard open to a desert instead of having neighbors on every side. It's even better to have a taste of wildlife during the morning drive to work -- a rabbit here, a family of quail there, a roadrunner trying to outrace you, and even a seeing a coyote is a pleasant sight.

But, when you encounter a tarantula in the kitchen and a horde of scorpions in the garage -- especially with a 2-year old hooch -- well, let's just say I had a fear of waking up and finding my entire house covered with all sorts of desert critters, much like those cliché action movie scenes, where the hero has to save the damsel, a cute asian boy, and two "too-cute, too-cute" cats. But, I digress.

After 2 other pest control companies, Aztech Pest Control is definitely the best. They are always timely, and I think Juan (one of the owners) said that it was owned and operated by him and his brothers. And, the best part is that they didn't lock me into some ridiculous contract that made me pay some penalty on the off-chance that I didn't like their service. I think they also provide service to Rio Rico and Oro Valley. I'd provide a website, but they're so small that they don't have one yet. If you do decide to use them, tell Juan that the San Juan folk referred him :).

Finally, a tv channel that recognizes me -- Er, those people

2005-07-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

Actually, nerds already had tv shows dedicated to them -- in fact, they had whole tv channels. They are called Sci-Fi and G4TechTV. The cool part about this launch is that we can do the nerd thing and download them via our 1.5Mbps ADSL, even giving us nerd options like downloading the shows in MP4, AAC, MP3, OGG-Vorbis! Yeah!

My only gripe is the use of the word "nerd". Do they have to use such a derogatory term? Maybe it's me, but I hear the word, and I get flashbacks of the inside of trashcans upside-down :). Besides, "nerd" is so anachronistic. In the '90's, we were called "Entrepeneurs". Today, we're simply called unemployed.