writ. dodging classification

So where we last left our hero, He was getting his rental car and driving towards that inevitable traffic jam that is highway 5 to LA, on saturday 7 Aug 04 :

Pretty much my day started early, getting my rental car, and getting breakfast with my Uncle and Aunt. My rental car, a Luxourious Chevy Cavalier. Oh yeah riding in style. By 10am I was off onto “the 5″ headed north to LA. I called up Heidi and Chris to let them know i was incoming. The drive, was actually quite quick for three quarters of the trip. From Oceanside all of the way up to Anaheim, I hit no traffic. Then the traffic comes right after the Disneyland exit. I was headed to Burbank, where Chris lives, and pretty much had about 30 miles left to go. This next thirty miles took me the same time as the first 70.

Well enough about driving on to the events. I arrive at Chris’s apartment, of which was very easy to find (great directions thanks chris and heidi!). I was beat, from getting in late and driving. So i needed to sit down. So the beggining of my LA fun was a half nap on their couch, while we talked about stuff going on, and what we wanted to do for the weekend. All the time I’ve been amazed at how beautiful the weather was so far. Its that way everyday! god I’m so jealous.

My weekend goals were very general. I wanted to see LA in the way that LA people kinda like to go around and see it. I’m not big on tourist traps personally, its not my thing (ok i didn’t and couldn’t pass up the trip through hollywood! or seeing wierdos on venice beach). So first things first we went out to get something to eat at this cool restaurant named “Mo’s” down right near the Warner Brother’s studios lot.

Now on to Hollywood, just to say I did. We get to Hollywood finally. There was a bit of traffic getting down into the area where we needed to park, but overall I didn’t remember it being the worst traffic we saw that weekend (getting to Venice Beach took the cake on traffic). All in all hollywood was pretty interesting. We got to hit the walk, and go in some cheesy tourist shops. The highlight of the day of course was seeing the freaks dressed up in some sort of costume looking for tips for photos taken of them. There was this one guy especially, who was just freakin wierd. He really wasn’t a character from any sort of movie. He was just som e tall lanky, thin, black guy who had demon wings on and horns on his head. I believe he had some sort of contacts in and he walked as if he had goat legs. Lets see what else. I think he may have had a tail. The rest of his costume was pretty much straps. Pretty S&M I guess. Guy was freaky. Though for some reason his voice did not match his costume at all, he was doing a voice of sorts (not just speaking like a normal guy), but I just didn’t think it matched at all. After seeing the globe-trotters hollywood walk star we all decided to kick it out of this overly crowded nutzoid place.

Up next on the agenda was going to see Ameoba Records. I have to say, thats a pretty badass record store. I want one of my own. Not much else to say, it wasn’t anything really revolutionary. It was just good. I probably could have bought a bunch of stuff, but I didn’t really wanna have to deal with extra stuff to bring back with me on the plane. Then we moved on to going to see Garden State. This movie i guess is old news by the time I’m getting around to telling my story, but i think it was still only in 4 theaters across the country when we saw it. I loved it. I Highly reccomend it. Its got Natalie Portman being ever so cute, and Zach Braff, of Scrubs fame. Braff also wrote and directed the movie. Great first time out for the man. It was just one of those movies I knew I was going to buy on DVD as soon as i stepped out of the theater.

Wow, this all only covers 1 day. Damn.. i still got a whole week of stuff to tell people about. I’ve pretty much told the major points to most people who would care, but I’m determined to get this stuff down. I will push forward!!

Day 2: LA consisted of Food, ice cream, a bookstore trip, and then on to Venice Beach to see all the crazies. Quick synopsis of Venice Beach… the people were crazy ;). We saw some people doing rollerskate dancing. That was pretty trippy. Its like they never left the 70′s. I mean wow. To top off the venice beach trip we saw a crazy street performer balance a girl on a chair on his chin. That was pretty damn cool. He also ate fire and pretty much did what you’d think a sideshow act type would do. A true carney.

To finish up my time in LA, we went out to Noodle World (i think that was the name) for some awesome oriental noodle dishes. I mean seriously the best I’ve had anywhere, and then headed out to do some Karaoke at this place that Chris and Heidi frequent in LA. Karaoke I have to say was the highlight of the weekend. Nothing better than getting drunk and singing. Yes I did sing. In fact I sang “Hell” from the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I had a blast, and I think I did it pretty well. Apparrantly I was pretty popular .. girls and guys alike. I had to fend off some propositioning later, but hey all in a days work. I can’t help that I’m so damn good looking.

I guess thats about it for LA. I headed back down to Oceanside the next morning after goodbyes to Heidi and Chris. (You guys rock!) I’m so in their debt for their gracious hospitality during my stay in LA.

Interesting article here. Take a look.
http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html

Pretty interesting article on the dot.com boom, and its subsequent dot.bomb. It sites a good amount of things that can be learned from what happened with the dot.com businesses. Its not talking about the stigma attached to it now, its talking about good things that dot.com companies brought out, and things that can be learned. As with everything that is good, its only good in moderation. The bubble, was a bubble and it invariably burst. Not all things in it were bad. There is a whole slew of things that survived and are quite successful today.

One of the more interesting business practices that is sited in the article is the idea of building a startup from day one that is intended to be sold to a larger company, along with all its technological innovations or whatever else they innovated. I have to say I’ve thought of this very idea myself. Small companies have nothing to loose by trying something new. Thats what they are, something new, its inherent. Big companies excel at getting product to the masses. New things don’t really feed their bottom line. Its far easier for the big company just to buy the new innovative thing and then do what they do best, punt it out to every breathing body that they can.

You know, i can’t really say i blame big companies for doing this sort of thing. I was reading a conversation that I had with my friend Dan a little while ago, and saw a comment about Microsofts business practices. He was referring to the fact that they buy up anything that comes along and assimilates it into the M$ fold. I mean is that really evil? Some say yes. I’m not too sure I know. On one side its like the little guy has no chance. On the other hand. Those little guys sold out cause they got a whole freakin lotta money from M$. So really? did the little guy loose out there? The small company got bought, and now its innovation are gonna reach everybody? How is that bad? Sure ok, you can say maybe M$ bought some company like that just to shelve its product, but really, there is two sides to it. That little company that got shelved didn’t have to sell themselves. They could have stayed a small company and found other people to buy them who would actually put their product out. But they did sell. What does that say about the people behind the product? I bet you’d have never seen that product anyways. You didn’t loose that product to M$, because it probably never would have seen that light of day.

Hey this is all just me spouting off B.S. lol, so go read that article, its pretty excellent.

Yes the title is quite the way i felt this morning. No loud noises, but i’m sure if i had heard a loud noise, it would have definately hurt my head. I woke up with a combinate headache from drinking last night and sinus’s in that I’ve been fending off a cold all week. Small price to pay i guess for having a pretty good time. Jay was in town for Yom Kippur, so we all went down to the Mt. Washington Tavern to meet up with Jason and the rest of the crew. Pretty much we’re all bad influences on each other. Good time was had by all. I lost my voice almost from yelling loudness, beer and the cold i’m getting over, so you know it was a good night haha. Jason got the DJ to dedicate a song to me, and I nearly fell on the floor laughing because of it. Wow that was pretty non-descriptive. Hah .. ok its gonna stay that way.

Right. Lets see whats on the bill coming up for me:

1. Sunday is Mat and Emily’s Housewarming down in DC. So rocks its gonna be a blast!
2. Jason’s works charity soft ball tournament coming up that I’m on a team for. I gotta remember what I need to bring to that. Also i gotta find my freakin baseball glove.
3. I need to go find a turntable, cause Joey’s got some vinyl for me!

Lets see that brings up a good topic. My too buy list of CD’s DVDs and other stuff.

The buy me buy me buy me buy me list:

1. Turntable (see above)
2. Star Wars DVD’s .. (Yeah I’m gonna break down .. i know i’m weak)
3. More CD’s from Dischord, Like 2 more Fugazi CD’s, Some Minor Threat, and probalby something else.
4. New Cake CD comeing out!. Pressure Chief. I’m so buying this the day its out.
5. I totally want to buy Fable for XBOX, it looks badass, plus i haven’t had a good game for a while.
6. Yeah Worlds of Warcraft is coming out sometime.. EBworlds says like November, but I’m not sure i believe it. I have to try it, i just can’t not try it. Hope its not a dissapointment.
7. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Criterion Collection DVD set. God i freakin love Terry Gilliam flicks

Ok thats about all .. i’m signing off.

So yeah, I’m awake. Its saturday morning. I don’t know why i woke up at 7:30. Maybe it had to do with me not turning my alarm clock off and having it rouse me at about 5:55am. The problem here is I heard the damn thing stop. But the beeper just kept going off. It just kept ringing right in my ear. I was thinking to myself… why is this thing ringing directly in my ear? Well i come to realize somewhere in my sleep or the morning before i had placed the damn thing under my other pillow (its a portable alarm) to dampen the beeping sound when it goes off. Well here comes the issue. Somewhere over the night i had rolled onto the side of the bed, so low and behold when the alarm goes off, its right in my ear, through the pillow. I finally figure it out and shut the damn thing off, only to wake up not much later at around 7:30am or so.

I’m watching Sportscenter on TV… i just saw a clip of Barry Bonds hitting his 700th Homerun .. i’m not really that excited… whatever. I only turned on sportscenter because previously i was quite content in watching The Burbs on HBO, but the channel decided to get all screwy and go out. oh well.

On to other matters. Its crappy weather lately. Crappy. On the one day that i wouldn’t have minded rain all that much, it ended up being clear. Hows that for irony. Well with all this I haven’t been able to drive my car with the top down. Yes i have the most serious issues don’t I? lol.. ok ok .. i’m guessing not many people have that much sympathy for me on this matter haha. Oh yeah the weather… i say this because i keep hearing the howling of wind outside my window. I can’t quite tell if its raining now, from my vantage point, but i can tell its windy. I can tell its wet outside, but I can’t really tell if the rain is still coming down. Does it matter? I guess not… its still nasty weather. It needs to clear up!

well till i am less lazy and decide to just make a webcam widget thingy on the sidebar .. i’ll just have my post .. for my working webcam now.

There are just some days when you need to take a walk. A walk to clear your thoughts. A walk to list all those things you need to do. A walk just to get your mind and body moving again. So many reasons with just this one outcome. Really, walking, by yourself, is it really that powerful a ritual that it can solve whatever it is that put you out there in the first place? Hey, you’re asking me? I’ve got no clue. I guess its all perspective. We all end up curing ourselves, maybe we just need a catalyst. Walking can be that catalyst. Well for me at least.

Its dark, the moon is full, and the stars are bright as ever. I don’t really know why i notice this, and maybe my minds just hypersenstive, or i’m making it up. I find myself thinking about fast food. A spicy chicken sandwich. My mouth begins to water just a little. Wait, no thats not what i’m out here walking for. I have a reason. I have some great metaphysical controversy i need to work out of my life. With this realization I start to walk a little faster, but then slow down to a saunter.

The slow hum of an underpowered foriegn economy class car starts riding its way into my senses. Why do I know this? I just do, they make a distinct sound, just like any type of engine. It sounds more akin to a go-cart or a sewing machine than it does to what a car is stereo-typed to sound like. Well i guess i’ve done it again, I’ve wandered my mind away from what i really wanted to think about on this walk. That pressing topic that put me out of my apartment and onto the street walking with no particular direction.

So today was my first day of 2 days of meetings up in Camden, NJ for work. It went well. Ended around 1:30pm, so my coworkers and I went to the USS New Jersey battleship museum. It was pretty interesting and our tour guide really knew his stuff. Plus the guy seemed like he really loved his job. He was an old guy and retired I’m guessing. Its always great listening to people like that talk, because their passion for the information and history can’t help but transfer to you just a little.

Of course my day wasn’t without its falters. I, being the knucklehead I am, forgot my dress shoes for my uniform. So luckily I had an alright polo shirt and khakis with me, so I just wore normal clothes. Yep, I totally just left my uniform shoes sitting on my couch all by themselves. Oh well, no big deal, I was the only AF person going and really it was up to me to choose my uniform for the day. I really do like going to these meetings in my blues though. Oh well, life goes on, nobody gets hurt, i just feel like a schlep.

Thats about all.

Yes, what some have been waiting for, I have put up pictures of my new car. Located here:

http://iammikesdomain.com/imagery/Z4

For those who have not heard about it. Here’s my official blog announcement! YES! I bought a BMW Z4 just 2 days ago, on the 31st of August. I’m still getting it through my head that I was really able to buy such a nice and cool car. I really have liked these cars ever since its predecessor, the Z3, came out. Its so sweet. Now I did buy it used. Its about a year old and had 7000 miles on it (Barely even broken in!!).

This week has just been getting better and better, even besides buying a new car. I guess somedays your Karma just needs a kick start. Alot of things seem to go really good sometimes. Maybe its just a state of mind, but hey whatever it is, things are going great. Who knows, maybe other things will come to fruition just as my car buying has this week. We’ll see!

Ok stop reading this and go look at the pictures!

I keep getting side tracked on finishing my story. I swear i’ll do it sometime. It may be a little late. But I’ll do it. Maybe it’ll be better later on after summer a little, so i can remember vacation time ;) before we get into to less nice weather round these parts. haha. Ok thats all for that.