TwoPennies

It's been a while...

Been busy with work and other things... and haven't had much to say of late.  But last night I picked up my new (used) toy and thought I should share:

It's a 2005 BMW 330ci, and while I had never driven a BMW until less than a week ago, I have to say that I'm a big fan now.  Man, is this a sweet ride.

I've been wanting to get a new car ever since moving to Vegas, but of course I figured I needed to buy a house first.  And that took a couple of years longer than I expected... but now that I'm more or less settled into the house, I started looking around at cars again.  I've been wanting something sporty (as a contrast to the Explorer that I've been driving for -- *gasp* -- 12 years now!)  And I've always been partial to convertibles.  I've been looking at the BMW 3-series for a while, and the brand new models are gorgeous -- but freakin' expensive, too.

Enter CarMax.  They had a few models to choose from, mostly 2005 and 2006 (lease returns, as mine was) and the prices are about half what a new 3-series would cost.  I have to say, the CarMax experience was generally quite good -- although my sales guy flaked out on me a bit when it came time to meet him to actually pick up the vehicle, keeping me waiting for half an hour before he showed up -- and I really appreciate the no-haggle price policy (particularly with used cars, which can be a major pain to negotiate).  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to others, and I expect the next time I'm looking for a car, I'll probably start there.

So, as of this writing I've had the car for about 24 hours, and it's been topless for about 22 of them...

And I've already been caught in the rain (yes, in Las Vegas, it does occasionally rain) -- fortunately I was able to pull over right away and put up the top so no harm done.

Since this isn't exactly the very most practical car for hauling things, I kept the Exploder as well.  Oh, yeah, and SUVs have about a five dollar trade-in value now, so there was that.

My friend George at work, who previously owned a 3-series sedan, was very excited to learn of my purchase.  He warned me, however, to be careful -- as he described it, his car had been a lemon: the chick magnet on his BMW was broken!  Time will tell on this car, but hey, I've still got a year left on the factory warranty... so no worries...  :-D

Victory for Victims 8k in Encino, CA

Race day.  I was both excited and nervous about doing this; excited about doing something competitive for the first time in about a century, and nervous because I have no idea what I’m doing and I don’t know how hardcore people are going to be.  I woke up about 6 times last night like a kid waiting for Christmas.

The weather was great and it was a pretty easy trip to the park.  There were parking enforcement officers directing traffic, which was nice.  It turned out to be a pretty big event; it was managed by W2 Promotions, who seem to know what they are doing.  There were quite a few booths for fitness clubs, restaurants, etc.  The Laker Girls and Rafer Johnson (former Olympic decathlete) were there, and some radio DJ was the emcee.  The Laker Girls warmed up the crowd and then we gathered by the starting line; I was right behind actor James Remar, so I had a celebrity sighting for the day.  The only tough part was that the 5k run/walk people also started with us, so there was quite a crowd in the start area and many of them would be slow.  I managed to weave through that bit without spraining an ankle (my initial fear) and trotted on.

The run went well for a while, but then my left knee decided to start hurting before I had even made it to the first water station about 1/3 of the way into the race.  I managed to grab a cup of water but some dude ran into me in the process and I nearly dumped water on the poor race volunteer.  I’m sure she had worse, but I felt bad.

My pace got worse and worse as my knee started screaming at me.  I thought about walking every so often, but I didn’t think I would want to run again if I broke stride.  The pain got so bad, though, that I did slow to a walk at the second water station at 2/3 completion (another dude ran into me then as well).  I didn’t walk far, but it really sucked trying to run again.  I managed to run/hobble slowly the rest of the way, finishing in about 54 minutes.  Not great, but if my knee wasn’t so bad I think I would have been happy with my result.  I’m not sure if I beat James Remar; he was around me much of the way, but at the end I was only thinking about that blasted knee.

I got some water and a banana at the finish, and could have had some food and even ice cream (Ben and Jerry’s was there) if I wanted to stand in line.  I did score some assorted health drinks to go with the free mechanics gloves (weird, but kind of handy), shirt and water bottle that were in the goody bag.

I finished and I did not die, so I accomplished my objectives.  I may have no cartilage in my left knee, however, which is not at all fun.  I’m working Tylenol, Sportscreme and ice like an old football player, and I’m serious need of a massage, but I feel awesome.

It was a pretty cool experience for my first race.

I Want to Run, I Want to Hide

I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside.  Cool song.

 

I am going to run my first road race tomorrow—the Victory for Victims 8k in Encino.  I’m hoping to finish the race and not die.  I have never been a runner; I played plenty of sports, but never ever was excited about running for no reason.  In fact, I really hated any sort of plain running at all, and never understood anyone who enjoyed it.  Naturally I am concerned that I have gone insane.   

Painting the House

I'm getting ready to have the interior of the new house painted, and I've got pictures of my color choices posted here.  There's one decision yet to be made, so if you've got feedback let me know right quick -- the painters begin work on Friday, so I only have a few days to nail down my plans.

UPDATE:  Since posting this item, I noticed the automatic page name given to the permalink for this entry.  I wonder how many search hits THAT'S going to generate for me???  :-D

Booze Quiz

Missed the first question on "Mojito", alas...  (hat tip to Bog):

97%ALCOHOLIC

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Anybody Home???

So the blogging's been... shall we say... sparse over the last couple of months.  As usual, real life's been pretty hectic.  Here's what I've been doing instead:

• Working.
• Trying to keep up with the 782 hours of new TV shows that the DVR records every week.
• Not coincidentally, developing a serious fondness for Yvonne Strahovski from Chuck.
• Working some more.
• House-hunting.
• Working yet again (are we detecting a trend?)
• Occasionally, sleeping.
• Still working.
• Almost-house-buying (there's a deal pending as I write this, which hopefully will be resolved in the next few days).
• Taking a break from working.   Nah, just kidding...
• Booking my long-awaited trip back to Portland this upcoming weekend.
• Guiding the fictional Frail Blazers (with a healthy Greg Oden) through a .500 season in NBA 2K8 on the XBox 360.
• And, just for a little variety, working.

So the stress of work, and trying to find (and buy) a house, have been pretty draining to say the least.  And this pending deal will hopefully be resolved soon (it's a pretty complicated situation involving a slightly botched short sale with multiple bidders being evaluated by the bank) but my fear is that the seller tries to make a move either Friday or Monday which are both travel days for me.  Yikes.

In any event, the work doesn't look like it'll let up any time soon, but hopefully I'll be able to pop in and mouth off once in a while.  I see that a lot of people are still getting to this site looking at the flight simulator screen shots (and many of them get here while searching for "Aladdin Screen Caps" interestingly enough... how disappointing that must be!)  So perhaps I'll get a chance to do a bit more flying and post some pictures.  Anybody want to see anything in particular?  Leave a comment here and let me know!

Sucks to be this guy...

Some guys just can't catch a break.

I wonder if this means people are going to start requiring their fiancees to stipulate their sexual orientation in pre-nups, to avoid this sort of issue in the future.  That way, if your wife leaves you for another woman, you can at least claim fraud and try to avoid alimony in the first place.

Sheesh.

While we're on the subject of alimony.... how is it that feminists aren't up in arms over the whole concept of alimony being owed until the woman remarries (or dies)?  I mean, essentially that's a legal stipulation that a woman is a financial burden to be borne by her husband; the only way the first husband gets out of that obligation is if there's another husband to take on the onus of supporting her.

Seriously, how inherently degrading to women is THAT?

iYawn

So Apple finally unveiled their latest gadget, the iPhone.  Some people think it'll be the next iPod in terms of product success/market domination.

I think, not so much.

First off, a disclaimer.  I am apparently the one person in the world who doesn't think that the iPod interface is just the best thing ever.  I absolutely HATED the Macintosh interface when it first came out (now more than 20 years ago) because it guessed wrong when it thought it knew what I wanted to do.  So I don't get all "oooh and aaaah" over Apple interfaces in general.  Eye candy is nice and all, but I'm more concerned with functionality.

So at first glance, the iPhone does have an interesting interface, but what does it do that's really new?  Put another way, what does it do for $500 that you can't get with any other phone?

The answer:  run OS X.

That's it.

All of the actual functionality of the phone, marketing hype aside, is available in other phones.  Hell, my 2-year-old Treo already does everything -- EVERYTHING -- that the iPhone does.  Play videos?  Check.  Play MP3s?  Check.  Check my e-mail accounts, allow me to send e-mail and SMS messages, all with an actual QWERTY keyboard?  Check, check, check.  Browse the web, including Google maps?  Check and double-check.

Oh yeah, and my Treo will even make phone calls, too.

And I don't have to wait another six months before it's available.

And perhaps the very best feature of my current phone versus the iPhone?

I don't have to do business with Cingular to use it.  I will never, EVER do business with Cingular again, even if they are the "new AT&T" as a recent TV commercial proclaimed.  But that's perhaps a story for another blog.

Anyhow, that last bit may be fixed in the next 6 months, so I won't actually hold it against the iPhone now.  But my point is, for all the marketing hype about how revolutionary the iPhone is, it just isn't.  According to their website, "Apple reinvents the phone."  They haven't.  It's nice, but it's not a market-changer the way the iPod has been.  It certainly won't be a market dominator.  Is the phone overpriced?  Maybe a little, but show me an Apple product that isn't.  Is there anything especially wrong with the phone?  Probably not, at first glance.  Will everyone simply have to have one?  Absolutely not.

So it'll have good sales based on the Apple cachet, but in the cell phone/PDA world, it's just another option that can easily get lost in the crowd.

A Long Break

I'm going back to work tomorrow for the first time in 11 days (though I did have to go in to the office for a bit last week, but that scarcely counts).  While I was off, I didn't leave town, so what did I do with all that time?

Not a damn thing.

Oh, I had plans a-plenty going into this long break.  But then, I often have plans.  And more often than not, those plans don't get carried out.  You see, I'm a procrastinator.  Not just your run-of-the-mill, "I'll get to that tomorrow" procrastinator, either.  I'm so bad, I got a birthmark when I was 8 years old.  (Profuse apologies to Steven Wright, no relation!)

So what was I going to do with those 11 days off?  In no particular order, I was determined to:

• Clean the apartment
• Do all the laundry (not just a few days' worth)
• Get out to a few local scenic areas (such as Red Rock Canyon) and take some pictures
• Get the motorcycle fixed, if not actually insured and registered
• Finally move Outlook onto my laptop so that I can use it as my main "productivity" machine
• Check out some of the many casinos in town that I still have not yet visited
• Finish reading a couple of books that have been in the pipeline for a while
• Rework/update my personal web site to contain info more recent than circa early 2002
• Put in a fair amount of work on my family web site which has been dormant since 2004
• Catch up on some of my woefully late e-mail correspondence
• Blog about the many and varied interesting topics that have arisen over the past month or so

What did I actually accomplish during this time?

• Slept a fair amount (hey, with my normal work schedule that IS an accomplishment)
• Made a half-hearted attempt to clean (some of) the kitchen
• Did a few days' worth of laundry
• Lost a few days' worth of pay (over several days' play) at Sunset Station, without doubt my most-visited casino in Vegas
• Read a few chapters from one of those books in the pipeline
• Finally moved Outlook over to the laptop (started that at 7pm on the last day of vacation)
• Figured out how to post to the blog from my cell phone (started that around 9pm on the last day of vacation)
• Blogged about this single, not-especially-interesting topic (started that at about 1am on, technically, the first day back to work)

So I am not quite what you'd want to call, "goal-oriented".  But I prefer to focus on the one goal I did meet, rather than those I did not...

And it was awfully nice to be away from the office for that long, while not really having to actually do anything or be anywhere during most of that time.  Earlier I had intended to take a trip out to SoCal to visit Jason and his family for a few days, but as I alluded to at the top of this post, those plans had to be scrapped at the last minute.  Which was a bummer, but actually it was remarkably refreshing to take a vacation and be almost entirely stress-free during the whole thing.  The trouble with out-of-town vacations is that, while I do love to travel, they just aren't especially restful.  And as much time and energy as I put into work, I do need the occasional rest.

So there's my essay on "What I did with my Winter Vacation".  Happy New Year, everybody!

P.S.  I plan to blog more regularly in 2007, too.  Or sleep more regularly.  It really could go either way at this point...   ;-)

Ramblings

I’m pretty excited because I Googled myself and something actually showed up (this site).  It’s like I’m a real live person now.  Big day.

The last few weeks have brought us Thanksgiving, great football and two video game console launches.  I bring up the latter because I saw people camping out in front of Best Buy and Target stores several days in advance of the Playstation 3 launch.  My first thought was that these people need jobs.  It’s cool to spend the night (one night only) for concert or playoff tickets but a video game console?  Please.  Of course most of these people were hoping to buy a PS3 to put it on Ebay, where the things were selling for over $3000 at one point.  This, of course, leads me to wonder: what special kind of idiot pays $3000 for a video game console?  These are the truly sad people, who really need to go outside and find girls.  You really would have a much better time taking the $3k and blowing it in Vegas than you would diddling a controller.  Maybe that’s just me. 

In the interest of disclosure, I do own an Xbox 360 (I did not, however, buy it right when it came out nor did I pay more than the regular price), which does increase my Dork Quotient as far as my wife is concerned (plus I just used “quotient” in a sentence, so that’s twice as bad).  In my defense I also drink whiskey, watch football, lift a fair amount of weights, gamble in Vegas (I’m a bit down on the city right now, though, but that’s another story) and have a tremendous appreciation for women, all of which have to increase my Stud Quotient.  Ok then.  Besides, my wife has also played a game or two, so bite me.

Moving along—Thanksgiving also brings us football!  I have to confess that I’ve liked the Dallas Cowboys from way back in the Roger Staubach era, so Thanksgiving has always been great because I always had a game to watch (this is not really related, but I also have liked the Green Bay Packers even before I met my wife, who is from Wisconsin and is therefore genetically programmed to love them. And cheese.).  Anyway, the morning game brought us Detroit v. Miami: The Return of Joey Harrington.  I’ve liked Harrington back from his college days in Oregon, but it was painful watching him in Detroit.  It was fantastic watching him spank old team with 3 TD passes, especially since the crowd was booing him mercilessly.  The sportscasters even started to like him, which is kind of amazing after they spent the last 4 years calling him a bust.  Back in Detroit he was criticized for not being very mobile, but in Miami he’s praised for his ability to avoid sacks—go figure.  I’m glad he’s doing well and I wish him luck as he goes for 5 wins in a row tomorrow.

Hey from L.A.

Hi there! David asked me to participate several months ago, but I have a problem taking direction from others.  If you can’t be early, be late!  I have known David for about 347 years (give or take) and we have talked about blogging for quite a while now, so it’s nice to finally get started.

I recently moved to the L.A. area (Burbank) from Portland, OR.  Ok, I never actually had a Portland address; I’ve lived in Aloha, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Salem, and Corvallis, but unless you lived in Oregon you probably don’t know any of these places.  Most people I’ve talked to have asked me why I wanted to move, usually in a “what were you thinking” kind of way.  About the only answer I can give is that my family and I needed change.  I have lived in Oregon for all of my life, with the exception of about a year in northern CA when I was 2.  Yeah, I know that doesn’t count.

Anyway, after a trip to Vegas last year my wife thought it would be great for us to live there.  She was really frustrated with the lack of sun from October to March every year, and to be honest I really got tired of the gray skies too.  I love my wife and want her to be happy (plus more sun means less clothes), so I got on board with the idea.  She applied for a job in Vegas, which turned out to be a 6-month process that led to an offer in Beverly Hills instead.  I was able to transfer to L.A. and there you go.

Now as I mentioned, most people think I’m nuts to move to southern California after living in Oregon all my life.  Yes, Oregon is nice.  Very nice, actually.  It’s very green, mostly clean, and the beaches are great (if you don’t mind wind and cold).  Plus there’s no sales tax and you don’t pump your own gas (which is weird to everyone except Oregonians).  I like Oregon a lot, but there just aren’t too many job opportunities there.  For various reasons most companies based in OR have left and now only Nike remains. The school situation isn’t all that hot either, and that isn’t going to help jobs down the road.  For the moment it seems that Oregon is a great place if you are retired or you just sold your $1 million dollar shack in SoCal and want to buy twice the house for half the price.

Now as you can imagine, we have a lot of sun here in L.A.  It’s been pouring up in the NW but it was 80 here last week.  Plus we have Disneyland (huge selling point for the kids). Anyway, that’s enough for my first post. It’s movie night—the kids want to watch Over The Hedge and I’ve got to make quesadillas.

What is contained in a bottle of ink?

A friend of mine from here in Oregon is studying calligraphy in the last offering of a one-year program at  Roehampton College in London.  The story of a young American in London learning an underappreciated art with students young and old from around the world is a pretty interesting story and she tells it well.  She is touring Scotland this weekend so I expect some nice pictures within a couple days.  You can also find a link to her in the sidebar too.