10/24/10 (19:35)
  • today was a shitty day. still raining. found a leak in meryl's art room. finished off work for meryl's organizing project for her ex-teacher. tiled before and after going there for that. niners lost.
  • the leak in the art room is the result of a poor stucco patch so we're not going to hire rafael next time we need stucco to patched. pretty disappointed by this. he's a nice guy and he works hard, but i don't think he quite gets all that needs to be done for a good job. when we patch the stucco on the back of the house we'll revisit the area above the art room window which has failed. blah.
  • decent amount of tiling was done considering we had to break in the middle of the day for the other job.
  • niners can't do anything right. secondary is suspect and no alex smith means they're even worse than before. to all the niners fans who were chanting "we want carr," how do you feel now? david carr has been in the league for 9 years and had a stable situation and arguably the best receiver in the league in andre johnson, but didn't do any better than smith who has had 6 offensive coordinators, has lost the starting position a couple times, injury problems, and a couple head coaches. there's no doubt to me that smith is better equipped for this team. not to say that he's great, but he's better than carr and probably the best we got.
  • wanted the phillies to win last night but that didn't happen. not sure why howard didn't protect the plate on a questionable pitch. when i doubt, swing and hit it foul. i thought that was the prevailing wisdom. giants are a tough team and are the perfect team for the playoffs because they've got some timely hitting and solid pitching. having sluggers like howard and a-rod doesn't seem to matter much because it seems like they go cold 50% of the time. give me a guy like cody ross or aaron boone or luis gonzalez who hits a little hot streak at the right time over a slugger. sluggers get you to the playoffs, but tend not to win it for you.
  • yesterday i went to school for NABCEP test prep. it was a long 4 hours and i didn't get that much out of it. i don't think i'll continue to go. perhaps once or twice more if the teacher (different teacher than the one that teaches my other two classes) allows me to go without paying/enrolling. just not worth the time on the weekend.


    • 10/22/10 (17:04)

  • six people were laid off from work this week. pretty fucked up stuff. at the beginning of the year they had a meeting and said that the person who was let go in january was the only one and that they took action soon so that we wouldn't be waiting for the other shoe to drop. obviously they were wrong and the other shoe dropped in a big way. i'd be willing to take a 10% cut if the management team would do the same. that's not going to happen. pretty sure i'm safe. i do the work of two part time people and our department makes money and is only three people, so there's not much room to cut. rough stuff.
  • "I think sufficient proof must now exist that over-priced movie stars do little besides leaving an insufficient amount of money to make the film properly, or cause an unnecessarily high picture cost. A recent 'Variety' study, published during the past year, showed the domestic grosses of the last four films by a group of top stars were not sufficient to return even the star's salary, computed at a recoupment rate of 2.5 to 1. On the other hand, films like 'Dr. Zhivago', '2001', 'The Graduate' and many others show that people go to see good films that they enjoy, and that the main impetus of going to the movies." - stanley kubrick, from the screenplay to the uncompleted film "napoleon"


    • 10/21/10 (17:52)

  • started raining a bit a little while ago. definitely feels more like fall now. blah.
  • thinking i'm going to take the NABCEP test after i'm done with the solar panel class. evidently it's quite hard, but it wouldn't hurt to have another notch in the belt and another option should anything happen at the alumni house or whatever. it's all about creating options for yourself.
  • neighbor is getting his house painted. talked with painter about a quote for our place. don't think we'll get it done, but it doesn't hurt to get an idea what the cost is.
  • going to la next weekend to see usc get pounded by the #1 team in the country. i think that'll be the first home loss i've seen in person in like 10 years. quite a run.


    • 10/17/10 (11:03)

  • started raining today. too bad because today we had planned on taking care of some under the house stuff, including a termite treatment on the northeast corner of the house. now we'll have to figure out something else.
  • sarah should be here soon with eli to help us move the new stove/oven into the house.
  • was in the paper again the other day. again because of my dmv letter.
  • hate the rain and fall and winter. pretty soon the time will shift and it'll be dark at 2pm or whatever and for the next several months life will be basically awful. blah.


    • 10/16/10 (14:24)

  • meryl had an art fair this morning so i worked on the house alone. finally painted the patched stucco from the roofing job. still have two spots i need to do. one i missed and one is on the side of the house, not sure how i'm going to get to it.
  • usc game is on, but i can't get it on the tv; might be how we setup the satellite, unsure. 42-0 at the half which is nice. good rebound for us. very surprised by score for two reasons. cal's defense is decent so 42 points in one half is pretty ridiculous. also, usc's defense sucks so to shut out cal for the first half is impressive. nice to hear that usc is rebounding from two last second losses in a row. barkley seems to have really cleaned up his game this year. last year i was down on him because he would make a great play and then a bonehead play. unlike alex smith, he seems to have learned.
  • i feel real bad for alex smith, but at what point do we have to get rid of the guy? niners are depressing ever since garcia left.
  • tried hooking up a new router, but it's not working. i'm officially too old to learn anything new on computers. hate them.


    • 10/15/10 (17:29)

  • feds look like they're going to crack down on ca if prop 19 passes. sarah's boyfriend and i have a bet on this and it looks like i'm going to lose if prop. 19 passes. i figured that holder and obama were reasonable people and would respect states' rights on this issue, but perhaps not. obama is a true dickhole and hypocrite if he goes after california on this. our government is a fucking joke.
  • saw a black angels song on a commerical for some video game yesterday. they've done a couple great tracks so good for them.


    • 10/12/10 (17:34)

  • had my letter to the editor of oakland tribune in the paper today. i complained about the dmv and other govt. institutions being behind the times and suggested the papers do a series on the issue. they didn't get some of my punctuation correct, but it was the same as i wrote it other than that.


    • 10/10/10 (21:34)

  • so alabama loses by two touchdowns and they only drop to number 8? whatever. michigan state, utah and lsu should be higher. they should also have some sort of grading built into the voting for the ap, coaches, and usa today polls. if you're dumb enough to vote for texas as the #1 team in the country for the first four weeks and then they lose two in a row, your vote should count for less. my sister could pick a better top 25 than some of these assholes.
  • niners lost another close one. four games decided by 3 points or less for my football teams in the last 8 days. it's depressing.
  • worked on meryl's dad's place today. they had new granite installed so we hooked up the faucet and garbage disposal, etc. also did a couple other little things.


    • 10/9/10 (22:08)

  • went to work this morning for the homecoming crap. seemed pretty slow on campus actually.
  • went to palo alto to see the usc/stanford game. great game, maybe the best i've been to, but it didn't go our way. defense is really struggling and just seems lost this year. offense is great, though. kiffin jr. made some great playcalls and showed big balls at times. if the defense was half as good as it was even last year (which was a bad year) then we'd be undefeated right now. but that's not how it works. we didn't calls going our way either, which was too bad. stanford was fairly mean spirited and really seems to hate usc for some reason. stanford has won three of the last four times we've played so them rushing the field after beating us on the last play, at home, when they were favored by double digits seemed odd. weird fans for sure. being double digit underdogs was odd for usc, first time in 12 years apparently. that's a pretty amazing run.
  • i've had my teams lose three times in the last week on last second field goals. twice from usc and once from the niners. not a great feeling.


    • 10/8/10 (17:33)

  • very cool project.
  • had the remake of "creep" stuck in my head the last two days. music is great, but it seems to get stuck in my head very easily.
  • going to start counting down the song rating project, rather than counting up. setup a smart playlist that screens out all unrated songs and i'll just use that from now on. should be more efficient and it'll (easily) give me a number that i can use to count down from.
  • working tomorrow for homecoming. blah.


    • 10/7/10 (18:13)

  • busy busy busy.
  • it's homecoming week so work has been more hectic than usual. this weekend i have to work and then i'm going to the usc/stanford game with dad. it'll be my first game in palo alto so i guess it won't be a total loss. i expect a 49-24 type of loss. my football teams are sucking this year.
  • roy halladay is my favorite baseball player, not sure if i've mentioned that here before or not. i make it a point to get him every year on my fantasy team and that's about the only reason i participate in that losing venture. yesterday he single-handedly beat a playoff team - got a hit, an rbi, a run. also pitched a no-hitter and allowed only one walk in nine innings. he's a beast.
  • still slowly working on rating all my music. i've added about 900 songs since the last time i did a progress report in june, but i also rated about 5400 songs in that time. slow but steady wins the race i guess. i had rated 24.9% of the songs in june and i've rated 38.3% of them now.
  • working on a plan for putting solar panels on our roof. it's part of a class project more than my actually planning it because i'm going to do it. took measurements of the roof including vents, etc. pitch wasn't as much as i thought - 25 degrees which is between a 5/12 and a 6/12 pitch. worse on the front gable, but haven't measured that one.
  • this weekend will work on meryl's dad's house and do work for alumni house. next weekend hope to work on meryl's mom's house (new roof on garage). weekend after that it'll be more tiling in our bathroom. bathroom has taken longer than i had hoped, primarily because the distraction level is high.
  • lincecum also had a good outing today. good for him.
  • going to try to get better (again) about updating and uploading pictures.
  • there are a few programs i need to get, but haven't been able to locate. good ftp prog, nero, full adobe acrobat, and add vice versa to the list for backing up my system. also bought a new router and switch that i'm going to try to setup. definitely getting older because computer stuff is less and less within my grasp. have always hated software end of things and that's where all the problems are these days.
  • it's tough keeping up with a few different jobs, homework, school, movies goals, time off, and all the other things that happen in life. next year i'm going to make a more concerted effort to get better at balancing off time and busy time.


    • june progress:
    stars # of songs % of total
    1 481 5.5
    2 4979 57.8
    3 2098 24.3
    4 691 7.7
    5 361 4.1
    8610 24.9

    october progress:
    stars # of songs % of total
    1 790 5.6
    2 8064 57.6
    3 3387 24.2
    4 1180 8.4
    5 586 4.2
    14007 38.3